(The Odds Of This Are) Astronomical
by ProbableLurker
Summary: In which Jason Brody and his friends take a vacation that leads to the Rook islands, and he ends up finding his alpha in the form of a murdering pirate lord that was trafficking them all out. Things get even more complicated from there on out. A/B/O dynamics, Vaas/Jason.
1. Chapter 1

It turned out that paying for skydiving lessons from a DJ of all people with cash, wasn't a great idea if the wooden cage that he and Grant were tied against the bars of. Jason grit his teeth in the midst of his frustration, clicking uncomfortably against the dirty gag that had been haphazardly shoved in his mouth.

He looked around, trying to gauge just how awful of a situation they were in. Grant was in front of him, tied down just as effectively as he was. Right outside the threshold of their cage, was an intimidating looking Hispanic man who seemed to enjoy singling Grant and him out for some reason.

He hadn't seen this man before, but he had heard about him. Often the other pirates around the camp would walk around, talking inanely to each other and he would hear about their leader, Vaas. It didn't take a genius to think that this might be him.

"I like this phone," he said, casual as all hell. Like they were three friends having a pleasant conversation. "This is a nice fucking phone. What do we have here? Grant and…" he glanced over at Jason, looking at him like he recognized something about him. He didn't want to think about what it was that he recognized. "…Jason. From California. Well, I hope your mama and papa really love you. 'Cause you two white boys, you look very expensive. That's good because I like expensive things…"

While Vaas had been monologuing, Grant started grunting behind the gag – probably calling him every name under the sun, even though it came out basically unintelligible. Jason fixed him with a purposeful glare as if to tell him telepathically to keep his mouth shut. He would have thought Grant would know better than to antagonize and instigate someone like that.

Grant did not get the message and within moments it got on the man's nerves and he started speaking again, "I'm sorry, what did you say?" he asked in an obviously rhetorical fashion. Jason squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see what might happen. "What did you say? DID YOU WANT ME TO SLICE YOU OPEN LIKE I DID YOUR FRIEND?! SHUT THE FUCK UP. Okay? I'm the one with the fucking dick. Look at me, look me in the fucking eye. HEY! LOOK ME IN THE FUCKING EYE."

Completely on instinct, Jason opened his eyes again to see the pirate practically inside of the cage, posturing at his brother like he was about to kill him. This was fucked up. This was so fucked up.

"Look me in the eye; you're my bitch." He told Grant, surprisingly restrained once again. "I rule this fucking kingdom. Shut the fuck up. Or you die." Jason had kept quiet, hoping to be small and insignificant enough that he just disappeared, but he still managed to garner his captor's attention.

"What is it, Jason? Jason, what is it? Why aren't you laughing now like you did up there? What, what is this not fun anymore? Have I failed to entertain you? You see the thing is, up there, you thought you had a chance. Way up in the fucking sky, you thought you had your finger on the pussy trigger but Hermano, down here… down here? You hit the ground."

His mood changed once again from the menacing, vaguely threatening affect to something almost friendly and suddenly it was clear that it was directed just at Jason now and he began agonizing over why this man was so damn familiar to him."It's okay, I'm gonna chill. Because you and me and your tough guy brother are gonna have a lot of fun together."

Vaas was prone to mood swings, Jason realized with horror as something in the air changed just then and he zoned in on Jason with eyes full of fury that the omega couldn't understand the meaning behind. "What the FUCK do you think you're doing here? Trying to use your pretty little omega tricks on me? You want to fuck with me? You think you even can?" Vaas questioned him, asking them rapid fire without even giving him the chance to answer – even if he wasn't gagged.

Jason shook his head, more out of placation than out of defiance. He knew how to control his scent but he didn't really like to do that. Not because it was manipulative – being manipulative never really bothered him – but because it took a lot out of him, it drained him both physically and emotionally. This was too fucked up. This was way too fucked up. Jason didn't want any of this. He just wanted to go home.

The alpha didn't believe him and he quickly became tired of what he assumed Jason to be doing to him – despite all of Jason's protests to the contrary – and came into the cage and roughly grabbed Jason who – while at the same time, Jason couldn't help but just be happy that he hadn't decided to kill him yet – immediately took to panicking and thrashing in the alpha's hold.

Grant, who had been quiet enough not to anger Vaas – knowing how horribly unstable he had already shown himself to be – was even more full of panic and rage than Jason himself. He screamed behind the gag, squirmed and flailed in his binds as Jason was half dragged and half carried across the camp.

Jason didn't gain any traction with it, if anything Vaas just gripped him tighter, the omega quickly tired himself out and went limp enough that he was practically dead weight. He was carried into a small, closed off room and didn't bother at all to stir until he was dropped down onto a lumpy mattress.

Even then, he barely made a movement other than a startled gasp behind the gag when Vaas grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back, exposing his throat in a display of forced submission. He let out a whimper when Vaas nuzzled against him and buried his nose against the omega's neck. It was a strange sensation, being scented out of nowhere like he was, not exactly comfortable but not exactly unwanted either.

It was like something was pulling him towards the alpha and the more he tried to fight it, the more he was pulled in. It was overwhelming enough that he felt like he was drowning in the conflicting sensations that he was feeling. He didn't need to even look at Vaas to see that he was feeling the exact same pull as he was, maybe even worse with how fervently he was scenting Jason.

The alpha growled into his shoulder, turning Jason around and gripping his face painfully enough that he was forced to look at him. "Why… the fuck… do you smell so good, huh? Huh?!" he snapped, coming off as both furious and confused at the same time. "What the fuck do you think you're trying to do here, huh?! You think you can fuck with me, pretty boy? You think that you can fuck with me?!"

Jason tried to tell Vaas that he wasn't doing anything to him, at least not on purpose, and tell him to go fuck himself all in the same sentence but all he could manage behind the gag was a series of muffled out grunts and whines.

So instead, he does the next best thing and pushes his scent onto Vaas – practically assaults the alphas' senses with it – just to show him that if he had wanted to use his biology to manipulate him he could have gotten much farther with it than he had with this naturally unnatural pull that the two of them had been afflicted with.

Vaas felt the push and pull of it intensely and nearly fell off of the ratty mattress and onto the floor below them, "Pinche omega putana." he grumbled barely under his breath, the reality set in for him just as clearly as it was for Jason.

That wasn't to say that he wasn't still angry, just that his ire wasn't really directed towards Jason anymore, now it was just aimless, directionless and volatile. Vaas let him go and took to pacing around the tiny room, fuming and growling to himself, inadvertently giving Jason a chance to fight the binds that were still wrapped tight around his wrists and ankles.

It took him a few minutes to free himself from the binds but once he did, Jason crashed into Vaas, pouncing on him so hard that the two of them hit the ground with a thud. His heart raged inside of his chest like it was trying to break out of him as he straddled the alpha and placed his hands over his neck with the intent to maim him if he had to. His chest heaved, his breath bordering on hyperventilation.

Jason had never killed anybody before and it clearly showed. Still, he was the only one here and he had to be strong. "Fucking tell me where my friends are or I'll, I'll kill you. I swear, I'll kill you." he stuttered out, panic taking hold of him once again. His fingers shook against Vaas' collarbone as he threatened to push down and squeeze.

Vaas was not all that impressed by Jason's intimidation tactics if the cruelly amused smile he has on his face gave him any indication. "You wanna kill me white boy?" he challenged the omega,"Go ahead. I fucking dare you to go on and try. I promise you, Jason, I promise you that you won't get far."

Jason wanted to kill him and he didn't – it was like he wanted to want to do it more than he actually had the will to go through with it. He tried to tell himself that Vaas was dangerous and had kidnapped him, he could kill him and probably would when this was all over. He just couldn't bring himself to go through with it and something told him that it wasn't just because he had never killed someone before.

With a defeated groan, Jason let Vaas go and got off of him. He herded himself back into the corner and sat with his knees pressed to his chest, defeated. He needed to kill Vaas to get out of here but… for some reason that he couldn't quite put his finger on he couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to cut off Vaas' airways or stab him in the back or shoot him in the fucking face.

Fucking something more than what he was doing right now – sitting there all slack jaw and glassy-eyed like some brain dead ingenue in a terrible "romantic" novel straight out of a time before strictly enforced personal grooming habits and civil rights.

Vaas decided not to hold the assault against him, he would have done the same in the omega's position. He would have gone through with it, though. Maybe he should do something about it – make sure it doesn't happen again – but he doesn't particularly want to kill Jason, either so the two of them are stuck in a strange limbo. "You feel better now, Hermano?" He asked in a mockingly friendly tone as he steadily moved towards him with the intent to pull him back where he was again.

Jason responded to that with little more than a quietly spoken out, "Fuck you." to the alpha without any care for whatever consequences that Vaas decided to dole out to him. He didn't think that Vaas had any intentions of killing him, just yet, and he was emotionally drained enough that that was all he could bring himself to care about.

Vaas was decidedly tired of Jason's shit attitude and pulled the omega to the ground so that Vaas was on top of him and Jason was forced into a very vulnerable position. "Fuck me? No, no, no. Fuck you!" He snapped, "You don't get to be pissy with me, blanquito. You don't get to choke me out and act like a little bitch about it." baring his teeth at him once again, allowing them to lightly scrape over his bonding gland without even thinking about it. "You either man the fuck up and get it right next time or you shut the fuck up about it."

It was then – right when they were pressed so closely together – hits the both of them what it is around the same time and all the tiny clues piece together like into something concise and clear. The two of them had bonded unwillingly to each other, that was why they had a magnetic pull to each other – they were true mates.

It should be a good thing – a great thing even. He had always been told that having a true mate was something to dream about. But he supposed that "Dream About" was the key phrase here because it was rare as all hell. You had the roughly same chance of being struck by lightning as you would have with having a true mate.

Jason couldn't believe this – this wasn't something he had ever thought would happen to him. He smacked his head against the dirt floor in his frustration. Vaas was a little less torn about it than Jason was, using his position above Jason to his advantage to keep the omega pinned down beneath him.

Jason squirmed around a little to get out from under him, but Vaas wasn't giving him any room for it and he kept up with the surprisingly tender molestation, "You and me are gonna have a lot of fun together, cariño." He promised, turning the borderline threat from earlier into something sweet. "Just you wait," he added, equally as promising in tone.

Jason found whatever resolve – or self-respect – that he had and pressed forward to kiss the alpha hard on the mouth and Vaas returned the affection with equal vigor. It felt a lot more like fighting or fucking than it did like a kiss though, with teeth and rough movements punctuating the whole lot of it.

The fact that none of this made any sort of sense still hadn't changed, but Jason couldn't bring himself to care about it. He was enjoying himself and that was all that mattered right then. He let out a soft moan as Vaas' hands dove underneath his V-neck to grope, flick and scrape at the omega's nipples, almost tearing at the already thinly stretched and worn fabric of it as he did.

Jason responded to that as viciously by firmly biting down on the flesh of his shoulder as viciously as he could, managing to elicit a groan and a muttered out curse from Vaas as he managed to tear through flesh and even make him bleed a little bit.

Omegas had naturally sharp canines and nails – supposedly for protecting themselves from predators or unwanted contact, but they were also pretty useful for kink and even maybe a bit of petty revenge like Jason wanted to exercise right then. The omega pulled off of him, a bit of blood dripping from his chin as he pulled off with an almost apologetic kiss to the wounded spot.

Jason was content to continue on with this – he would have been happy to kiss and touch the alpha for hours, maybe even let him fuck him but they weren't able to get all that far, as a pirate with a bandanna for a mask came in to the room, greeting Vaas with an awkward cough punctuated by a hesitantly spoken out, "Boss." to get his attention.

Jason looked at the pirate, mortified not only at being caught like this but also at being interrupted just when he was starting to enjoy himself. Vaas showed his frustration clearer when he snapped at the masked pirate, "Fucking, WHAT?!" in a harsh tone, baring his teeth at the other man as he did so, and for a moment Jason thought that he might actually kill him for the lack of indiscretion.

The pirate at the door didn't seem all that fazed by Vaas' threatening stance, "There's a situation with one of the hostages." he explained in a matter of fact sort of way without giving away any information that Jason could clearly glean anything from.

"Stay here," Vaas told Jason before he let him off, "If you try to run, I'll know," he added and Jason didn't doubt that one bit.

Once Vaas was gone, Jason let out a shaky sigh of relief. Without the alpha in the same tightly enclosed space that he was in, the overwhelming cloud that he was under eased up. A part of him wanted to leave, to run the fuck away from the camp but still, something inside of him didn't want to stray too far from Vaas – the same thing that pulled them towards each other.

Jason could only hope that it would get less overwhelming with time, but he couldn't be sure. He knew next to nothing about bonds like this. In that moment, he would have done anything for Vaas. It scared him how willing he was to just let Vaas do whatever he wanted. It was jarring as all hell.

In the midst of his thoughts, someone came in – more like burst through – and for a moment he wondered – with both excitement and apprehension – if Vaas was already back to finish what they had started.

Jason was more than a little shocked to see that it was his older brother, looking more or less like he wasn't any worse for the wear. Without thinking about it at all, he bounded up and practically crashed into his elder brother, enveloping him in a tight – practically bone-crushing – hug.

"Grant! Not that I'm not happy to see you but what are you doing here?" He asked his older brother as they separated, who looked more or less like he wasn't hurt or injured. He was happy to see his brother but at the same time, he couldn't be all that glad that Grant was here – it was dangerous for him to be here.

"What are you doing in here?" The elder Brody replied, "That fucking pirate dragged you off somewhere, I thought you were dead. I'm just glad you're alive but you're not hurt, right?"

Jason really did not want to get into it with Grant about all this, he knew that there was no way that he'd understand. So, instead, he decided to say it as simply as he could, "No I'm not hurt. At least not much. Vaas, he likes something about me. I can't get into it right now but I'll be fine." he tried to explain quickly and simply, "He probably won't hurt me but if he finds you here, it's not going to end well." That was the understatement of a century. If Vaas found Grant with him, then he might kill Grant in front of him and he didn't want that.

Grant took about as well as you might think, "No," he shook his head, disgust prevalent in his voice."No, I'm not leaving you here with that psychopath. Come on, you have to come with me. We still have some time, I think, to escape but we have to hurry."

"Grant…" Jason started, voice barely above an exasperated whisper, – this is exactly what he was worried about. Grant had practically raised him and Riley after their father died and he was always a little overprotective over them both. Jason knew that if he told Grant that he was bonded with the pirate, that Grant wouldn't listen and might even go so far as to force him out of the camp. Jason wouldn't even blame him for it, "It's more complicated than that." he said instead. "I have to stay here."

"More complicated? This isn't complicated, Jay." He replied firmly, "What did he do to you?"

"Grant."

"I swear if he hurt you-"

"Grant! Just listen to me!" Jason snapped, grabbing his older brother's shoulders hard, like he was trying to rouse him from a deep slumber. It shocked him enough that he was stunned silent, giving Jason the chance to say everything he needed to say. "Just- look, if he finds you here…" he sighed heavy and world-weary, knowing that his brother would take some convincing.

Jason really didn't like the idea of manipulating him, but he knew that he probably had to if he wanted Grant to make it out of this encampment with his life. "If he finds you here he'll kill me and then he'll kill you too. Is that what you want?" he lied through his teeth, "No? then you need to go! Go on and get the hell out of here and find everyone else because they need you more than I do. Alright? I'll be fine, but not if he finds you here. He's not that- look, just go! Please."

Grant didn't look like he was entirely convinced, but he understood Jason's point. He couldn't make Jason come with him in any case, "Alright." he said, "Look, I don't know what you think you're doing with this guy but… just be safe, Jay." he said as he backed off and made his escape.

"I will." He said, with a surprising amount of resolve. Surprisingly, he found that he believed it. If Vaas was just about as affected as he was by this bond, then maybe he could use this to his advantage and get his friends back home.

He just had to be strong and he could do this. Maybe.


	2. Chapter 2

Jason was left alone in the room that Vaas had left him in for at least a few hours after Grant made his escape from the camp. The omega had quickly succumbed to the physical and emotional exhaustion he had endured in his short time on Rook and almost immediately fell into a dreamless and fitful sleep. He slept steadily enough that he didn't wake up until he heard shouting coming from right outside the door.

He hadn't allowed himself to fully wake up until he was forced to his feet by one of the pirates – their scent was so repulsive to him that he didn't even need to open his eyes and look at the man to realize that it wasn't Vaas who was grabbing him roughly and forcing him to his feet.

"What the fuck…?" He grumbled, still in his sleep filled haze. Two men stood around him and, for a moment, he thought that they were going to do something to him. He felt a strange sense of gratification when they started shouting at him, asking him where his brother was.

Jason laughed, more hysterical than anything when he realized that that was what they were after and why in the hell they thought he would have any idea about it, "What." he exclaimed, completely incredulous that this was even happening to him right then.

"Where the fuck is he?" One of them – the one who had manhandled him in the first place – asked while shaking him. "Your brother, where is he?"

"I don't know?" He parroted back, getting a smack across the face for daring to be confused as to why he was being interrogated. They asked him again and again and again - occasionally hitting him, trying to scare him into giving up. But Jason refused to give in, knowing that he was better off getting the crap beat out of him until either they gave up or Vaas intervened than to let them know that he had seen Grant. "I told you that I don't know where he is! I was dragged out of the cage and put in here. That was the last time I saw him!" He yelled back but the other men didn't seem impressed and smacked him with a gun hard enough that he fell to the ground, blood dripping out of his nose from the impact.

One of the pirates pulled him back up again, only to smack his head back down onto the ground hard enough to make Jason's vision spot. "Vaas says that we're not supposed to kill you, but sometimes accidents happen, yeah? Tell us where your hermano mayor is."

Jason refused to say anything other to that than, "Oh, fuck you…" and emboldened and angered by his refusal to cooperate, they continued on asking him over and over again – because they were so sure that he knew, so sure that they refused to listen to a word that he said whenever they asked.

The omega groaned, frustration ebbing away what little goodwill and patience that he had for the men in front of him and tore into them without any care for the deadly consequences. "How many fucking times do I need to say it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Do you understand me now, or am I not speaking slowly enough for you?"

Jason knew that he probably should have kept his mouth shut, but he was tired of this – he wanted these stupid pirates away from him and him kind of wanted Vaas here with him right now, for reasons that were inexplicable to him other than that he would be able to make them stop and leave him alone.

The pirates looked right about willing to murder him right about them – Jason figured that they were tired of the white, spoiled omega from California acting like he ran the place. But, hey, Jason wasn't the one that woke them up from a much-needed nap in the first place only to scream at them, interrogate them ad nauseam without listening to a goddamn word they say and then smack them around just to be extra annoying about it.

Jason stepped back a few feet, completely on autopilot – instinct taking over for him, overwhelming his stubbornness and his own insipid, bordering on self-sabotaging impulsivity to remind him of the actual, real danger that he was in. It became real to him just then, that he might die both because they wouldn't listen to a word he said and because he had no idea how to keep his stupid mouth shut. Great.

Before he could manage to run out of the room to somewhere safer both of the men grabbed him, one pulling one of his arms back far enough that if he moved or struggled at all he could break it while the other one kicked and punched him over and over again.

By the time that the door opened once again, with Vaas standing in the door frame looking angry as all hell, Jason's vision began spotting as he bordered right on the edge of unconsciousness. He looked at the alpha with bleary eyes, "Vaas?" he asked, barely audible in tone.

Vaas barely looked at him, instead focusing all of his attention on the pirates that had assaulted him, "I thought I told you not to touch Jason." He said, deadly quiet.

"But he-"

"ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?! I ALREADY TOLD YOU TO PUT HIM DOWN. DON'T MAKE ME REPEAT MYSELF." Vaas screamed, the pirates obeyed him almost instantly out of fear and a perverse sort of respect for the pirate lord. Jason dropped down to the ground, sliding down onto the dirt slowly. "Don't move." He told the two men as he walked over to check on the omega, "I'm not done with you yet."

Vaas looked over at Jason and saw how beat up he was – blood dripping from his nose, bruises blooming over his cheeks and under one of his eyes, probably much more damage on his chest and stomach – and his rage was reignited once again and it was palpable in the air. He gently patted the omega's cheek to make sure that he stayed awake.

He didn't know if Jason had ended up with a concussion or even something worse than that."Keep your eyes open for me, cariño." He murmured to the omega, snapping his fingers right in Jason's face both to keep him awake and to make sure that his attention was on Vaas. "Hermano, Jason, corazón, open your fucking eyes."

He pulled Jason to his feet, steadying the omega for a few minutes before he brought his attention back onto the two men. In that moment, one of them tried to make a move out the door – only succeeding in getting pistol whipped hard enough to knock him to the ground, leaving him barely conscious. Jason almost felt bad for him, really, but that was before he reminded himself that they almost killed him for no good reason.

Against his own wishes, his mind is brought back to Grant, to his friends and especially to Riley – he feels a newfound wave of concern and wariness over them. Jason had protection from Vaas himself, he wasn't supposed to be in danger from these men and they almost killed him. What was going to happen to them? For all that he knows Grant is dead, lost to the jungle somewhere.

He has no idea where his friends are and he doubts that – even if Vaas had been somewhat forthcoming and trusting with him so far – he can just find out by asking. It's all so complicated. So fucked up. Why did things have to turn out like this? For all he knows, the lives of his friends are in his hands. Jason was self-aware enough to understand that having to rely on Jason was not at all a good position for them to be stuck in.

Jason was snapped out of his thoughts and back to the mess in front of him – The two men struggling, already halfway injured while Vaas looked intent as all hell on revenge and as much violence against them as possible before… well, before he killed them. Jason knew that that was the most logical conclusion here and he wasn't against it – at least not morally.

Vaas squeezed Jason's shoulder, with a touch that was teetering right on the fence between comforting and possessive at the same time. "You want to tell me what happened here?" He asked in a voice that was deadly quiet – hearing it startled Jason just a little more than when he was screaming.

Jason didn't even feel the need to lie or stretch the truth, the situation was so ridiculous. He was hesitant in his answer, "Well, I just woke up and-"

He didn't get very far before he was interrupted by one of the injured men, "He knows where the hostage went! I saw him-"

"I'm sorry, was I talking to you? Did I pick you up off the fucking ground, look you in the fucking eye and say a word to you? No? Then shut the fuck up!" Vaas snapped, shooting the man in the leg for good measure – as well as inadvertently making sure that neither of the pirates even had a chance to run off in fear – before he turned his attention back to Jason again, "What were you saying just then?"

Jason cleared his throat passive-aggressively,"As I was saying. I fell asleep after you left and next thing I know these two are screaming at me and hitting me because they… well I don't even really know why! Because, I guess that they were thinking I know where Grant is? I think it's pretty obvious that I have no fucking idea but they didn't listen! No matter what I tried to say they refused to listen to me…" The omega made a pretty pathetic picture beat up and trembling like he was – he was still incredulous that this had even happened to him.

Vaas hummed affirmatively, "What do you think I should do with them, hm?" He asked, wondering what the omega might come up with. He knew that he would be killing them no matter what Jason said to him about it – messing with Jason was like messing with Vaas' property and he wasn't going to tolerate that kind of disrespect – but he wanted to know exactly where Jason stood on this.

"Kill them." Jason blurted out almost immediately and with a tone that showed no pity or compassion for them. A manic smile that was full of pride broke out on Vaas' face– it seemed to him that the two of them had far more in common than just the bond that they had with each other. "Try not to make it too quick either," he added, only wondering for but a moment where that bit of sadism came from. He blamed it on what had to be some heady recent trauma.

"Now, that's what I like to hear." Vaas praised, smacking him on the shoulder a little too hard before he turned his attention back to the task at hand. Jason stepped back, one part afraid and one part fascinated, both of these conflicting feelings were holding equal weight with each other as Vaas addressed these men. "Now you two fucks, you thought you had the fucking right to touch my boy!"

One of them, the one that was still mostly conscious, tried to fight back. Cursing and spluttering both in Spanish and what must have been the native language of the island at Vaas. The alpha spun into a horrific sort of rage and pulled the man up by the arm, bending it back hard like he had done to Jason, but Vaas didn't just threaten. He bent the mans' arm hard enough that it actually broke with an ugly cracking and snapping noise that reverberated around the room.

It was so loud that it was almost painful for Jason to hear. The pirate began to cry out from the pain of having his arm broken, adding in with the rest of the noise, Jason couldn't help but think that it was pathetic of him and not just pathetic, it was utterly disgusting. Disgusting that he was crying like a bitch when he had been happy to beat Jason to death not just minutes before.

The omega is barely in control of himself when he turns to Vaas, "Can I see that?" he asked, pointing to one of the knives on his belt with a sort of wonder about it. The alpha handed it to him, curious about exactly how this would play out. Jason might have been a fish out of water but he was still Vaas' omega, he was sure that there had to be something interesting – in Vaas' sense of the word – about him.

Jason grabbed the knife and held it almost covetously for a moment before he drove it into the mans' body over and over again. The action wouldn't kill him, but it would cause him enough pain that he would be wrenching around in agony until he finally, finally curled up and died – slowly making the world a better and more worthwhile place in the process. The knife got so messy and slippery with blood that Jason ended up cutting his hand up – he didn't even notice that he was bleeding until his arm dropped to the side, limp and tired out from the physical exertion of it all.

Vaas laughed, clearly amused by Jason's seemingly hidden violent tendencies – from his space right next to Jason, Vaas clapped his hands together hard enough to startle the omega. "Shit, look at that hermano, look at how much he's bleeding, making a mess all the fuck over the place!" He squeezed the omega's shoulder in a proud and possessive manner. "Do you see that, Jason? See what you can do?"

Vaas' excitement was less than surprising to Jason, but it still managed to startle him a little bit in the strange, otherworldly head space that he was in. The rage in him had fizzled out a little bit, leaving him in limbo between contentment and exhaustion.

He nodded in a numb sort of agreement – he could see what he had done, both to the bleeding and sobbing pirate in front of him and to himself in his own rage-filled frenzy. Jason stepped back from the situation after that, wrapping bandages around his bleeding and sliced up hand.

Jason took a step back after that, allowing Vaas to take the lead in torturing and punishing the two men in such a way that their screams were sure to be heard all throughout the camp. Jason watched the whole affair with a kind of detached fascination with Vaas' expertise in the torture.

And "Expertise" was the key word here, because it seemed to Jason like he may as well have been educated formerly in causing someone that maximum amount of pain before he finally let them die and despite his internal monologue reminding him that that was not at all a good or impressive thing – it was a little scary and the same time it was impressing as all hell to the omega to be privy to it.

By the time that he was done, both of the men were bruised from head to toe, bleeding all over the dirt floor and with many of their bones broken or fractured painfully. Vaas dragged the two men out the door, beaten to hell. With one of them dead and riddled with stab wounds and with the other one on the brink of death himself – the live one looked so pathetic and desperate that Jason almost felt bad for him – and threw them down onto the dirt floor. The pirate tried to crawl away but he didn't get very far before Vaas took out a pistol and shot him clean in the head, killing him instantly.

The entire camp was deadly quiet as Vaas addressed the men, "Let that be a lesson to the rest of you fucks. Do not, do NOT fucking touch what's mine!" He yelled, loud enough for anyone within the limits of the camp to hear and understand that Jason was totally off limits and what would happen if anyone else had any similarly stupid ideas about his omega.

"Someone fucking clean this shit up." Vaas spat, before retreating back into the room. He slammed the door, leaving him and Jason alone together. The omega curled up against the wall instinctively, like he was gearing himself up for an impending attack from him– Jason knew that he could take a lot of punches and a lot of abuse but he was already reaching his limit.

A lot of the violence that Vaas used on both the captives and the pirates that worked for him was only for show, maybe around ninety percent of it was for show – even when he was drugged out of his mind on cocaine or heroin or whatever else he could get his hands on, he was smart enough to know that if he didn't throw his weight around and scare obedience into people, then they would never listen, he would get nothing done and Hoyt might as well shoot him in the fucking face right now.

But the rage he had felt when he had thought that Jason might have been seriously hurt? That rage had been entirely primal. His emotions had warred between making sure that the omega wasn't hurt like he had worried about and completely brutalizing Jason's attackers. It had turned into a mixture of the two, and given his mate's surprising show of sadism it all worked out for the best.

Vaas was just happy that Jason was fine – totally fine, mainly uninjured other than some superficial damage and what he had accidentally done to himself – Jason was anxious if Vaas might hurt him, for some unaccountable reason. He didn't know what to expect from Vaas, he had barely known him for hours and he already had emotional whiplash from both Vaas' mood swings and everything else that had happened.

Instead of attacking him – or even yelling at him for being an idiot – Vaas came over to where Jason sat, giving him a cursory once over before he asked if he was okay. "I'm… alive," he said in a numb tone. "I mean, just barely. But still… alive."

"Mm-hmm, barely." Vaas parroted, pulling Jason forward for a possessive kiss ."Shit, they almost killed you, Jason. Why didn't you fight back, huh?" He spoke too quickly for Jason to actually answer, the omega wondered if this was what 'concerned' looked like on Vaas. "Actually, don't answer that. I know why you didn't fight back. Stupid fucking California boy."

"Sorry that I'm not all that great in a fight…really," Jason answered back, spectacularly blasé, bordering on moody about it. "I can really take a punch though, that's gotta be good for something." He added, trying to compensate for how helpless he was just then.

Vaas suddenly pulled Jason up and then pressed him back down against the mattress and the wall behind them, refusing to give Jason any room to breathe before he was pressing his mouth onto the omegas neck, nosing around at his bonding gland. "Doesn't matter," He muttered, "They shouldn't have touched you in the fucking first place, should have fucking known better."

The surprising intimacy after all the violence that they had been through and done together was almost surprising to Jason until he realized that Vaas was just finishing what they had started earlier – before they were interrupted by Grant's escape. He let out a huff, thinking that Grant escaping the camp had almost ruined a lot of things. Specifically his face, definitely his face, which was still throbbing obnoxiously from the beating that he ended up taking not an hour earlier.

Vaas pressed surprisingly light kisses over the area before he heightened the pressure –escalating from a soft and feather-light touch to a mixture of tongue and teeth that had Jason grabbing onto Vaas' shoulders. Jason held onto Vaas tight, like his life depended on it, as the alpha touched, kissed and teased him for almost long enough to drive the omega insane with impatience and frustration. Once he was too frustrated to handle any more of the slow and teasing motions, pressed forward into the alpha seemingly fueled only by his own sexual frustration.

His fingers down underneath the red shirt that Vaas wore – appreciatively easing over the muscles before he tried to pull the fabric off of the alpha in an impatient, almost needy manner. He didn't say a word – couldn't bring himself to say a word – but his expression and body language conveyed his annoyance with the other man plainly enough.

Vaas let Jason go for just a moment so that he could take off his shirt in a haphazard manner before he moved back down onto the omega's body, the two of them slowly but surely stripping each other down until they were both entirely in the nude.

They moved together fluidly, appreciating each other's bodies with hands, lips, teeth, and with tongue until Vaas suddenly spoke to him in a voice bordering on a growl, "It's still pissing me off. I should mark you, make sure they think twice before touching you- no, fuck that. Make sure they think twice before even looking at you wrong." He kissed over Jasons' nervously bobbing Adam's Apple, "Might not even work, fucking idiots."

Jason nodded in a less than passive kind of agreement – if he wasn't as overwhelmed as he was, he might be aggressively baiting Vaas into doing it right there and then but he wasn't capable of that at that moment, so instead he just went with parroting back. "You should." he agreed, parroting back what Vaas said to him. "You really should." He added, completely honest.

The primal and purely omega part of Jason wanted Vaas to claim him, to practically tear his throat open. To leave him marred with a permanent mark that would let anyone and everyone know that they couldn't touch him. That they were not allowed to so much as look at him wrong because he belonged to Vaas and that made him completely untouchable.

Jason was already hard, already desperate with arousal so that when both of their unclothed cocks brushed together for a brief moment he let out a small, almost disappointed noise. They ground their hips into each other, briefly giving them the friction that they were so desperate for before Vaas suddenly pulled Jason's legs up and then together so that his thighs were pressed flush against his midsection.

Jason looked downright scandalized at being interrupted before Vaas explained what he was doing in as few words as possible, "Wanna try something," He said, "Just keep your thighs together for me, alright?" The omega did as he was told, locked his legs together tight enough that they quickly began to tremble a little bit from the slight exertion of it. His thighs were already wet with his own slick, so the slow slide of Vaas' cock forward was nice and easygoing.

Vaas thrust forward causing the omega's knees dug into his own chest, causing him a slight pain that was manageable but still bordered on being really uncomfortable for him. It didn't bother him for long as the uncomfortable sensation of it was overwhelmed by the pleasure of his alpha's cock grinding persistently against his own. The thrusts were slow and leisurely, but they weren't teasingly – and by that matter, totally frustratingly – gentle like Vaas' earlier movements on him had, so he didn't mind the slow build of it. Just from the first glance at Vaas, he would have expected a little more rough from him, but he had no doubts that there would be plenty of rough in their future.

It didn't take long for him to build right up on the edge of an orgasm. Right as he noticed that, he noticed something else – that Vaas had begun paying more attention to his bonding spot again. He waited in anticipation and he was partly surprised and partly underwhelmed when all that he felt was a slight flash of pain as Vaas bit down on the easily breakable flesh.

What was more intense, at least for Jason, was the empathetic and physical sensations of intensifying their bond with each other. Strictly speaking, most Alpha's and Omega's bonded simply through a claiming bite – that was how it was fulfilled with a "normal" bond – but the situation that Vaas and Jason had was…different.

They didn't necessarily need to do that, they just were. So the feeling of bonding with each other – again and manually – was intense enough that the word 'intense' felt like something of an understatement. The overwhelming sensation of it all was enough to push him over the edge, his cock spurting cum all over his own stomach.

Jason slowly but surely comes down from the high of his orgasm and it occurs to him, really and truly occurs to him, what he just did. It became real to him that he had helped Vaas torture and kill people. People who deserved it, maybe, but still… people in the first place.

It wasn't remorse, or even guilt necessarily, that he felt for their deaths but he did feel regret for being a part of it and for contributing in with the torture as much as he did. He had never thought of himself as sadistic, or even like he was a particularly violent sort of person.

"Shit, you're a mess. All fucking bloody and shit." Vaas says to him, drawing Jason's attention back to the alpha. He gently pulled Jason up by the waist,"Let's get you cleaned up and I'll show you around the place. It's pretty fucking nice, once you get used to it."

The two of them redressed haphazardly before they left the closed-off shack. True to his word, Vaas walked him around the camp, led him to a communal shower to wash up and gave him a new set of clothing – a red wife beater, thin cargo pants and work boots just like what the rest of the pirates wore.

Vaas made sure to keep an arm around Jason throughout the entire tour of the compound – both because he needed to have total surety that this sort of thing didn't happen once again and because he just wanted to keep the omega as close to him as possible until Hoyt or something else got in the way.

* * *

While Vaas helped the omega get his bearings around the compound, Grant woke up in a small hut looking and feeling like he was a man that had just been risen from the dead – with tribal carvings being tattooed into his arms by a man that he had never even seen before.

Grant tried to raise himself off the bed, or whatever he was laying on, but he was pushed back down firmly. "You are weak." He told Grant, speaking with an African accent, "Well. Not all of you. The arm has been deadened to allow for the Tatau." He explained, "Ah, it is brave to swim in a storm, but to sunbathe on a beach with pirates? Insanity."

Grant looked around the room for something – anything – to take the man down and get out of the room. He spotted a knife to his side, but the moment that he went to grab it, the man called his attention with a knife point to the face. "You have the right to take my life," He told Grant, still pointing the machete at his face in a show of warning.

"But know that I will also take yours." Grant stopped in his tracks at that, placated by fear more than anything else. The other man let out a chuckle that bordered on sounding deranged, "I am Dennis." he introduced himself plainly, handing the machete to Grant as if in an offering of peace.

"Grant." He replied as he accepted the weapon, if for no other reason than that it seemed like the right thing to do. He almost regretted it, when Dennis began to babble in some language that he had never even heard before.

"The Heron, The Shark, and The Spider." Dennis expounded, not caring that what he said meant next to nothing to Grant. "I know who you are, Grant. You are a warrior. And the Tatau…will allow for you to avail your true self."

He had met men like Dennis before, the kind that spoke in riddles and left you understanding less than you knew before, but as it stood he had no other choice than to work with him, "Listen, I need to find my brothers and four other friends."

Dennis nodded and beckoned him forth, "Come with me."

"So you'll help me."

"No. You can only help yourself. I… am going to free you." Dennis explained as he led Grant along. He decided not to question the other man anymore – because he wasn't really getting anywhere with it in the first place – and allowed himself to be led along.

He still couldn't figure out why Jason had been so adamant on staying at the pirates compound and it kept bothering him – it still made absolutely no sense to him that the younger man would choose to stay in a room with a pirate who might be doing god knows what to him.

Jason had shown no fear when it came to Vaas and that troubled Grant a lot. In fact, he had a quite a few concerns but he knew that none of those concerns really mattered right now, what mattered to him was that he had work to do – his friends and his brothers were being held hostage and he had work to do to get them back, using any means necessary. He sensed that he had a lot of work to do.


	3. Chapter 3

Vaas spent the next few days after the incident that Jason had had, clinging tight to the omega until he was forced to the southern islands to meet with Hoyt. The overprotectiveness that he had shown was comforting to Jason, although it had shown to be unnecessary. The pirates under Vaas' control had gotten the message, loud and clear – Jason Brody was not to be touched, not under any circumstances and with absolutely no exceptions to the rule.

If the pirates had a problem with Jason or his untouchable status, none of them said a word about it. Other than a few notable exceptions, no one dared to say a word to him, or even look him in the eye most times. It elicited two feelings out of the omega – the first being an exhilarating feeling of being untouchable, which was admittedly pretty great. The second being a strange and isolating feeling that he was practically alone on this camp full of people, not so great.

It wasn't like he was losing any sleep over not winning any popularity contests with a bunch of murdering, drugged up pirates but it still bothered him that he was starved for company. He liked to think that he could deal with being alone for long periods of time but if he was evidently not, if the way that he was insecurely wondering why people were pointedly ignoring him.

He had been wandering aimlessly around the camp, bored out of his mind when he bumped into one of the very few pirates other than Vaas that dared to speak a word to him. Carlos had been directed by Vaas to watch over Jason and keep him company when he wasn't around. Though he wasn't really one for company and conversation. At first glance, Carlos made an imposing figure – he was larger and taller than Jason and usually fully equipped with body armor that covered him from head to toe. So when Jason walked right into him, he immediately fell to the floor on his ass.

"Ugh, shit…" He grumbled as he accidentally hit the man, smacking his body painfully on the hard shell of his armor. He had no doubts that he might be left with a few bruises from the impact. "What are you covered in steel or something? I feel like I got hit by a truck." Carlos didn't seem to be bothered or intimidated by Jason at all – which was a good thing in the omegas' book.

Carlos pulled Jason up by his arm, "You should watch where you're going," He stated in a blank tone that had a strange undertone of humor in it, "Might work out better for you."

Jason rolled his eyes in response to that, "Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know. I should pay more attention or whatever." He replied with his standard, less than pleasant attitude – rolling his eyes and pouting just a bit at being chastised like he was, even going so far as to bat his hand at the pirate dismissively. After a moment, he caught himself and reminded himself not to be such an asshole. "Thanks. For helping me up." He smiled halfheartedly.

The pirate let out a short laugh, so low that it may as well have been a huff of air. It bordered dangerously close to a scoff, like he found Jason entirely ridiculous. "You're welcome." He replied, just as unflappable as ever. "Maybe you should stop circling around the camp like that. It's setting everyone on edge."

Jason pulled an incredulous face at that, "Why would I set them on edge?" He asked, mainly rhetorical as he didn't expect Carlos to answer him, the pirate usually wasn't this talkative and he expected it to end at any moment. "It's not like I can do anything to them." As far as he was concerned, he was the one in perpetual danger here, not them. "And I really doubt that they're shaking in fear when I walk around the camp, I mean that's just stupid. They're not afraid of me."

Carlos shook his head slightly, the movement so short that it barely registered to Jason. "That's true, you don't scare them much. But they are scared of Vaas and Vaas cares about you." He explained in a cryptic sort of way. "You got a lot of power here, boy, try not to abuse it too much." Don't make an ass of yourself, was left unsaid but Jason understood it all the same.

"I guess that makes sense," Jason muttered, barely audible. The omega snorted derisively, obviously unconcerned about the feelings all of the other pirates, for obvious reasons. "I'm not sorry for that. I'm bored." He snapped back, speaking slowly and with his attitude hanging heavy in his tone. "Maybe I wouldn't be pacing around so much if I had anything to do." He laughed shortly, but it came out more like a choked off snort. "And maybe they should have thought about something like this happening before they became a bunch of literal slavers and junkies."

Jason wasn't above acknowledging his shortcomings – even if all he really did was acknowledge that he had them, instead of any meaningful change, because who had time for that – and he understood that he was probably coming off as petty, spoiled and downright petulant, he just didn't let it bother him.

Carlos gave him an odd look that made the omega feel profoundly judged and he finally relented with a groan, "Alright, alright, fine fine fine. I'll figure something out, we don't want these guys getting itchy trigger fingers, right?" He said rhetorically and began to walk away from Carlos, who allowed him to leave and be by himself. That was good, he preferred it when no one was hovering over him.

Once he was out of the other mans' earshot, Jason let out a long-suffering sigh. He was bored. He was so, so bored. He walked around the outskirts of the camp for a little more as he looked for something to do and he found a solution in the form of a rack of weapons.

He looked at the display of guns with interest. It had been years since he had gone hunting and he had always enjoyed it. There was no one else around, so he felt safe to grab a weapon and take it with him. He picked up one of the sniper rifles and tested the weight of it in his hands.

Yeah, he thought, this one would do just fine. Jason looked around the camp and noticed that no one around him was paying attention at that moment, which suited him just fine as he didn't want to go and get himself caught. Jason walked through the camp casually with the gun low on his hip. He picked up the pace at a gradual level, full on running as soon as he was in the wilds of the island.

He let out a giggle as he left – a feeling of exhilaration at getting away with doing something that he probably shouldn't be doing. He bent down just a bit as he laughed, the sickly feeling of cabin fever finally left him in that moment. He composed himself in moments and as he stood back up, he noticed a hill in the distance.

At first glance, he thought that it was lovely. From a distance, it looked like the hill was teeming with deer and other wildlife – absolutely perfect for hunting. Jason could only hope that the consequences – and he had no doubts that there would be consequences because there always were – of his actions weren't anything too drastic.

He had some anxiety about it, but he knew that he could deal with the consequences of his actions later. Some things never change, he thought, some things stay the same no matter where you are or what your place in life was.

* * *

Once he returned, Vaas found Jason sitting cross-legged on a hilltop right at the edge of his compound with a sniper rifle in hand, holding it in such a way that made it seem like he had had years of practice with guns. The pirate lord approached Jason carefully, not wanting to spook him and end up with a bullet lodged in some part of him. "Jason." He said in a firm tone as soon as he was within steps of the omega. "I was looking all over for you. What the fuck are you doing out here, Hermano?"

Jason let out a startled noise and made a point of putting the gun down to rest at his feet as quickly as he could manage. "Hunting!" He blurted out a little too fast, before Vaas could say much else. "I got bored so I went out hunting." He was technically telling the truth, but his demeanor was so squirrelly that he painted the picture of a guilty man, no matter what he said.

The pirate lord moved around so that he was sitting behind Jason and wrapped around him, his arms wrapped around Jason tight and tucked his chin in the crook of the omega's neck, nuzzling in close and tight to him. "Who gave you the gun?" Vaas asked him with a squeeze to the omega's shoulder.

Jason ignored his question in favor of asking his own, "Where did you go? You were gone for almost a week." He couldn't care less if he came across as needy – most omegas were needy by default so it wasn't like he was anything out of the ordinary.

"Answer my question." Vaas snapped at him, tone harsh enough to have most people baring throats in submission, but Jason wasn't one to cower to anyone. No matter how stupid his lack of fear was, he never gave in.

"Answer mine first," Jason replied, putting on a strong face that he wasn't all that sure would even convince the pirate. He held his chin up proudly as if he was trying to let Vaas know that he wasn't going to back down without saying a word about it.

Vaas nipped at Jason's ear,"Are you always this difficult?" He asked rhetorically, "I was talking to Hoyt about you. Had to make arrangements to keep you. And you were fucking expensive so don't go running off or getting yourself in danger."

"Oh. Right…" Jason muttered to himself, remembering what kind of situation that he was in – like he had let himself forget that Vaas was a dangerous person, that he was one of the people who had his friend's hostage. He didn't know how anyone could let themselves forget something like that, and yet he had. He suddenly felt very uncomfortable, "Oh… Uh, no one." the omega admitted, coming off as almost bashful. "Yeah, I uh, I stole it and ran out here so I could hunt. Sorry about that…"

He wasn't sure if he should have apologized or not, but he had no idea what else he could say. He felt so out of place here, he didn't really know what the rules were here and he wasn't sure if he would obey them even if he did. For whatever reason, Vaas didn't acknowledge the halfhearted apology, "You spend a lot of time hunting, back in California?" He asked, speaking in a soft tone before pressing a few kisses to the side of his face.

The sudden physical affection snapped Jason out of his thoughts and he turned his attention back to Vaas. He greeted the alpha with a gentle smile as he answered, "I grew up hunting." He hummed in reply, a sudden sense of nostalgia overcoming him, "My dad was a sergeant in the army, so he made sure that we all knew how to shoot from a pretty young age. Did you ever hunt or do anything like that growing up?"

Jason realized just then how little that he knew about Vaas and it was a little frightening to him just how close he felt to the other man. He was drawn to him, like the two of them were magnets – one of them constantly pulling the other closer, whether they wanted to or not. "…wherever you grew up." He added helplessly with a pathetic expression on his face.

Vaas hummed softly in response to that, "I grew up native here and we hunted a lot because we fucking had to." he explained, "We don't have any other fucking choice out here. Now, was I any good at it? No, I was fucking terrible. But I did hunt a lot."

"Really," Jason exclaimed, his disbelief present and obvious in his tone. His lips twitched humorously as he spoke, "I would have had no idea. Why were you so bad at it, I mean, it seems like something you'd be great at." He said with an honest, complimentary tone of voice.

Jason found himself manhandled back onto the ground with Vaas over him, the grass below him scratched at his back, but he couldn't really be bothered by it. He was too delighted by the attention to care about any unpleasant physical sensations. "Too much waiting and watching, I'd get all fucking twitchy and end up scaring all the animals away," Vaas explained in a low voice. "Or I'd get all fucking distracted by something. You ever have that problem?"

A smile spread across Jason's face, "Sometimes. Like now." He replied, his fingers nervously stroking over the mark on his neck – it had healed within a few days, but it had left a pronounced scar on him that anyone could see that he belonged to someone. He had developed the habit of touching it on occasion as it was kind of a comforting feeling for him to know that it was there and that it was real.

The pirate lord pressed him down into the ground, rough hands gliding over the omegas stomach and chest. "Can't keep my fucking hands off of you." He murmured into Jason's ear as he arched into every less than gentle touch that Vaas gave the omega. "You drive me fucking crazy, you know that Amante, you drive me so fucking crazy."

Jason made an agreeing noise as if he was trying to let Vaas know that they were on the very same page. He was sure that he got his point across just fine when he felt the others' clothed erection rut against him, persistently grinding over Jason's own until the two of them were huffing and panting with little care for who might see them.

"Wait, wait, wait, get off." The omega suddenly demanded and he was surprised when Vaas did what he had asked almost instantly and stood up, edging away from Jason a little bit, "I want to do something different." He added in a low voice as he lowered himself down onto his knees and slowly took Vaas' cock out of its confines and took it in his hand.

He kept one hand braced over Vaas' thigh to keep himself steady and used the other hand to grip the base of the alphas' dick. He took a firm and gentle pace as he coaxed him to hardness and he had a nervous smile spread across his face, one that bordered right on the knife's edge between completely, embarrassingly sincere and entirely fake. Jason's tongue flicked experimentally on the swollen head of Vaas' dick before the flat of it was sliding over the shaft of his dick.

Jason was slow and easy going as he wrapped his lips around it, fighting his own instincts as he fed every inch of it down his throat. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing and concentrated on keeping his mouth wide open – Vaas' dick was so thick that it made his jaw ache to have it in his mouth.

He let out a slight whimper from the near breathless way that he felt at having his mouth stuffed full like it was. Vaas let out an approving moan, running his fingers through Jason's hair while he spoke to him in a mixture of both English and Spanish – he told Jason just what a good cock sucker he was and how perfect his mouth was. The omega was all too happy to take the compliment and practically purred at all of the things that Vaas was murmuring to him.

Vaas pushed Jason's head down until the head of his dick was touching the back of the omega's throat and he made the omega stay put like that until he was smacking Vaas' thighs to let him go. Gagging wasn't really a problem for him, but breathing definitely was. Jason bowled over and gasped as he caught his breath, muttering out a few softly spoken curses before his lips were wrapped around Vaas' dick once again.

Jason squirmed a little on the ground as he sucked, growing hard just from the sensation of making someone else feel so good. "Perfecto, blanquito, eres jodidamente perfecto para mí." Vaas panted above him, mirroring all of Jason's thoughts and feelings. He was sucking Vaas' cock for barely more than a moment or two before Vaas was pushing Jasons' head down again, bringing that dizzy and near breathless feeling that he had just recovered from right back.

Jason sighed and accepted it – enjoyed it, even – and he accepted it just as well as he had accepted the rock hard erection that lay untouched in the coarse combat pants that he was wearing. He tipped his head back and relaxed his throat, allowing Vaas to force himself deep in his mouth.

They continued like that for a while – Vaas would let Jason suck for a little bit before he was pushing his head down and making the omega take him in deep. The omega accepted the dizzying way that it made him feel because he liked it just fine until he was sure that Vaas was going to come down his throat, maybe even knot him like that. Jason pulled back until only the tip of Vaas' dick was in his mouth – he had done it just in time too, he barely avoided Vaas knotting his mouth. Good thing too, that would have been inconvenient as all hell being tied together like that for at least twenty minutes.

Vaas let out a short grunt as he came and Jason struggled to keep his come in his mouth without letting it spill down his chin. He pulled himself up off of the ground and kissed Vaas, sweeping his tongue over his partners own so that he could taste his own cum on Jason's tongue. Once the two of them pulled away and disentangled from one another, they noticed that almost all of the deer had cleared out.

"Fuck." Jason exclaimed, "I didn't even get a chance to shoot any of them yet. Damn it, you're right. You are bad at hunting." He threw his head back in mock frustration. Vaas reminded him laughingly that he had warned Jason earlier, watching the look on Jason's face morph from a bland sort of disappointment to a lazy and neutral expression. "Yeah, that's true." Jason muttered, knowing that it wasn't the end of the world if he came up empty-handed. They had food back at the camp, so it wasn't really a big deal – still, Jason liked to feel like he was contributing in some sort of meaningful way.

While Jason had been pouting Vaas had noticed something walking around in the distance and as soon as he realized what it was he laughed, "Dios mío, look at that deer over there." He gestured over to a small lake where a very fat deer waddled at the edge of it to drink.

Jason snorted, "Oh my god…That's amazing." his expression sobered up quickly as he noticed the opportunity at hand,"I bet I can get it down with one shot." Jason murmured so lowly that Vaas could barely hear him speak before he slowly picked up the rifle and slid down onto his stomach. Vaas hung back and watched him, keeping one hand placed on the small of the omegas back as he aimed the rifle.

His shot rang true and the deer fell to the ground, its head resting at the lake's edge – with the blood that it shed diluting in the water. Jason thought that it made a grim and pretty sight and if he had had his camera on hand, then he'd be photographing the deer. He had always liked darker imagery in his work.

He shook off the strange thoughts that he was having and skidded down the hill with the pirate lord to grab it and haul it back to the camp. The two of them skidded down the hill to get the heavyset deer and were quick to load it into one of the trucks stationed around the area. They'd have venison that night and it would be a much-needed feast.

* * *

They only remained at the encampment for a few hours before Vaas decided to take the two of them out again. Jason was glad to have the chance to go out again as he never liked to stay in one place for too long. Though he couldn't help but think that Vaas drove like a maniac, veering off of the road and almost getting the two of them flipped over on more than one occasion.

It took Jason a while to muster the courage up to ask what the hell they were doing and when he bothered to ask, it was the first time that he felt anything close to nervousness or a sense of self-conscious insecurity. Jason had no idea why he felt like he was so on edge, but he did. There was a pins and needles sensation all over his skin and everything felt a little more bright, a little more intense and he hated it.

He crossed his arms over his chest, closing himself off to any sort of communication that he might have had with Vaas if he wasn't so agitated and on edge. He figured that Vaas must have noticed his agitation when he asked Jason if he was alright. It took Jason a while to respond and when he finally did speak, his response was lackluster. "I… I'm fine." He finally lied in retort, giving off the impression that he was very clearly not fine. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, wanting the sun to blot itself out for the sake of his eyes.

Vaas looked at him in an appraising manner – like he was seeing right through Jason and all of the lies that he told Vaas and himself – before he muttered, "Bullshit," in a voice so low that it was barely audible and pulled the car over in a quick and haphazard manner. On instinct, Jason grabbed onto the dashboard and held on so tight that it made his fingers go pink and raw from the strain of it.

Jason looked at Vaas with an almost offended gaze, "What the fuck was that all about?" He asked before the alpha grabbed him by the jaw and roughly kissed him, leaving Jason with way more questions than answers. Vaas kissed him again a few more times, rough and short before he pulled out a heavily packed cigar and presented it to Jason with an almost playful smile on his face.

"What is that?" Jason asked, looking at it like it might bite him. Instead of answering him, Vaas lit the cigar and took a deep drag off of it, smoke intermingling in the area around them to an almost suffocating extent. And before Jason could question what he was doing, Vaas was pressing forward and kissing him hard, practically forcing Jason to inhale and take hit after hit. As Jason pulled away, he levied the pirate with an icy glare that only managed to amuse Vaas instead of intimidating him like he wanted. Jason coughed a little, tears being brought to his eyes

Vaas laughed and clapped his hands over Jason's shoulder, the motion felt harsh even though it didn't hurt him physically. "You're so fucking high strung, Jason!" He said in a dismissive and almost mocking manner. He waved the rest of the cigar in front of him, "You need to chill, man. Trust me, this will help you relax." Jason was a little calmer now, a little less agitated, so he could understand exactly what his partner was trying to say, "I usually like uppers but, when I need it, this shit evens me right out."

It was pretty obvious that he was baiting Jason, but the omega wasn't one to be above some obvious antagonism. Jason groaned, scoffed and rolled his eyes before he took the bait. "Fine, whatever, give me it." Vaas handed the cigar to him and he took a few vigorous hits. He smoked until he felt a heady sort of calm come over him. "I did feel kind of on edge." he reluctantly admitted once his headspace was a little more even. "I, uh, I've probably been making an ass of myself all day."

Vaas hummed affirmatively, "That's what this fucking island does to you," The alpha explained in an almost gentle way, "It fucks you up, set your nerves on fire and makes you feel like your riding a fucking roller coaster," he pantomimed a wave moving up and down to emphasize his point, "Sometimes, you need a little something to even you out. Like medication."

"Uh-huh, so what is this exactly?" Jason asked in a blasé tone, looking at the cigar curiously. He was a pretty heavy smoker and tobacco had never made him feel anything close to this. He had a nice and steady calm feeling, "I mean what's in it, like is it like weed or is it… I don't know, something else?" He shrugged halfheartedly.

The first response that Jason received was a few open-mouthed kisses on the side of his face, "It's something local, not sure what the fucking name is but it makes me feel real nice and laid back." he grinned at the omega, "How's it working out for you?" He asked, with a tone that suggested that he knew exactly how good Jason was feeling right then.

The omega let out an agreeing hum in reply and grinned back at him before he let himself out of the car and walked towards the edge of the cliff, "It's so pretty here…" He marveled, speaking in such a mystified way, like he didn't even realize that he was speaking in the first place. "Looking at it like this, you wouldn't think that it was so dangerous and fucked up. Like it's…" he shrugged and let out a short and almost bitter laugh, "I don't know what it's like. Don't pay any attention to me, I'm too high to be making any sense."

Vaas laughed, obviously enjoying the way that his partner was acting. He thought that Jason was being cute, in a sloppy kind of way, sure. But still. Cute. He told Jason as much, receiving a withering look and a muttering, flustered dismissal that only made him laugh harder.

Jason muttered something under his breath about how rude Vaas was before he decided to let it go. It's not like this was the first time that he had ever been teased in his life and he could deal with it. He frowned as he suddenly notices a smattering of small and lightly colored cuts over Vaas' right cheek."Hey, uh, where did you get that?" He asked awkwardly, fingers hovering over the wounded area. "I haven't seen that before. Weird." He muttered to himself and pulled a face.

"Ah, there was this girl." Vaas replied, "One of the hostages – maybe even one of your friends, I don't fucking know. Anyway, she got out of her ropes and tried to come at me. Scratched the fuck outta me with those fake, white girl nails." He explained in a brisk tone, "Fucking cunt made me bleed. If she wasn't worth so much money I'd have shot her in the fucking face."

For some inexplicable reason, the way that Vaas spoke about this girl reminded him of Liza and he suddenly felt his mood turn sour. As far as Jason was concerned, if there was anyone that didn't deserve to be treated like this – to be enslaved or trafficked, it was Liza. She was just a genuinely good person, she had always been good to him, even if Jason didn't deserve her kindness. If Jason could do anything to help her, in any way possible, then he would do whatever he needed to do.

"Liza? You've seen her?" He asked, suddenly overcome with a nearly hysteric sense of urgency, "Liza, she's tall and she has brown hair and green eyes and she has, like, she has a short scarf that she's always wearing. Is that who you saw?" Jason described her haphazardly, speaking a little too fast to even comprehend his own words.

Vaas didn't skip a beat, obviously unfazed by Jason's intoxicated mania. If anything, it was something that he was used to, "Yeah, sounds like her. She's an actress, or says she is, right?" He asked, almost nonplussed in nature and tone. "She wasn't fucking trying to act right when I talked to her."

"I have to get her out of there…" Jason mumbled to himself before he implored the alpha, "Do you know where she is?" He asked, maintaining some dignity before he was full-on begging to know where she was. "Please, I just." He sighed and tried to collect his thoughts, "This whole thing is really confusing and we barely know each other but she's important to me-"

"Your actress friend, she's at this old abandoned hotel – way out, southeast of here." Vaas interrupted Jason, "You want to go and get her, I'm not gonna stop you."

Jason paused, surprised that Vaas just told him – without even really having to spend all that much time asking. "Wh- so you'll just let me go so I can get her?" He asked, speaking in a disbelieving tone. "You would actually do that."

Vaas nodded, "I can't help you much but I can give you some stuff to make it easier – guns, medicine, armor. But I can't just run in and grab her, that's on you." He told Jason, "And if you get caught, I don't know you. And you don't speak English. You don't speak at all. And you're deaf. And probably blind too, I don't fucking know, but this just can't come back to me. Put something over your face and maybe, eh, we find something to cover your scent up. Maybe."

Jason snorted at that, "Okay, you know what, I can work with that." He replied in a magnanimous sort of tone, "Thank you. Oh god, this is, great. I can suit up tomorrow and get her back. I just gotta find somewhere safe to hide her after that. Awesome."

"We'll figure something out." Vaas dismissed, "There's a bunch of caves and abandoned shacks and shit out here, Amante, we'll find somewhere to hide them."

Jason didn't ask why Vaas was so quick to help him and he figured that he might never figure out why. Vaas wasn't really the predictable sort and his reasons probably wouldn't make sense to him. Or they'd make perfect sense. Odds are that he would just never know. "Right." He said. He was practically glowing with how bright his expression was. "Cool. Cool, cool, cool."

It wasn't like he was helping Jason because he cared about the livelihood of his friends. No, Vaas couldn't really have it in him to give a shit about the omegas' stupid, spoiled friends – if it were up to him, they'd have been shipped off already so that he wouldn't have to look at them anymore – but he knew that getting them released would make Jason happy and he really liked the look on his face when he was happy.

Then there was the fact was that Vaas was just bored. He was bored of the same old hostages that would come along every single time, crying and whining like bitches inside of their cages. He was bored of Hoyt treating him like crap, screaming his head off at him before he was placating him with drugs and he was straight up sick and tired of Citra taunting him from the safety of her temple like the fucking cowardice bitch that she was.

Jason made things interesting and he wanted to see just how much his omega could shake things up, and he would shake things up on Rook – that much Vaas was sure of. He could just tell, he had a feeling about Jason – a strong and familiar feeling that he couldn't quite place his finger on but he knew that it meant something good. For Vaas at least. Maybe not so much everyone else.


	4. Chapter 4

While Jason had been having a lovely time with Vaas – as well as finding out the location of one of their friends – Grant had been running around in circles on Rook. He was busy hunting, killing and scavenging the island to survive. Rook was beautiful, he couldn't deny that – but he couldn't let himself enjoy it, not even on a very base and surface level.

The health and general welfare of his brothers, his girlfriend and his friends were always at the forefront of his mind. It was maddening, the way that he felt most of the time. He felt a constant push and pull between where he was and where he desired to be and who he desired to be around. Riley and Jason popped up in his head more often than the rest of them, of course, they did.

They were his family and he had been more or less a surrogate father for the two of them since their father had died. It was difficult for him to turn off that ever-persistent worry. He would have been happy to run back to the pirates' camp and grab Jason – assuming that he was even still there – but he knew that he had to prioritize what was feasible.

He knew that he couldn't take on Vaas just yet, no matter how much he wanted to. The pirate had protection and worse than that, he had his brother right with him – being held captive and attacked for all that he knew. So, the moment that Dennis had informed him of a lead on one of his friends, he had run towards it without a second thought. This Earnhardt guy apparently had a few screws loose in his head and he survived by selling his home-brewed drugs to the pirates, but he was more or less harmless. Even if Dennis had referred to him as a, "Colonist,"… whatever the hell that means.

Grant made his way across the island, climbing radio towers and taking out a few outposts on the way. By the time that he was at the colonial house, he was practically bathed in blood and dirt accumulated from the journey he had made. He figured that he would just have to deal with it – for now at least.

He found the doctor in a dilapidated looking greenhouse. Everything about the area that he lived on looked old and run down – Grant had to wonder just how long he had been living here, seemingly untouched by both the natives and the pirates running rampant on the island.

Doctor Earnhardt was a squirrelly looking man who was constantly muttering to himself about this or that. He set Grant on edge, just a little bit, but he dealt with the man just long enough to see Daisy and get the whereabouts of a cure for her fever – a set of mushrooms in a cave below his home. As he left the house to go and get said mushrooms, the doctor had pleaded with him to save Daisy. He told Grant that she must be saved, both for Grant's sake and his own.

When Grant made his way down into the cave, he hadn't any idea what he should expect – he certainly didn't expect to suddenly be breathing in some sort of noxious vapors that made his vision cloud up and distort until it felt like he had been transported somewhere else entirely.

The rest of the cave fell down and crumbled away until only a strip of the cave was left and Grant was walking forward without any will of his own – moving purely on inertia, through the distorted version that he had fallen into.

He was walking forward, seeing fragments of both his past, his present, and his future. He saw the club in Bangkok that they had partied in and met the DJ who told them about the Rook islands. He saw the DJ – what was his name? Doug something or other, he had been so unassuming that Grant hadn't bothered to think about him much – and noticed just how much he looked like the other pirates that he had encountered and killed on the island.

He wasn't given much chance to look at that before he was being pushed forward once again and he saw Riley tied to a chair and beaten half to death with some oddly familiar looking man standing over him and telling him what he needed to do if Riley wanted to work for him and what would happen to him if he didn't.

As he was pushed forward once again, Grant noticed Keith kneeling on the floor, bloodied and bruised as he was frozen. He saw most of his friends – he saw Liza, Oliver and Daisy all trapped in their specific places of bondage – but he didn't see Jason, not once.

It would have made him ask more questions about it but everything that happened right before his eyes was so unexplained and so sudden that he couldn't determine any sort of meaning behind it and before he could really figure anything out – he was being pushed out of the vision, out of his fugue state and thrown back into reality.

When he came to, Grant looked around, unsure of how and when he had gotten in front of the doctor. He quickly recovered from his slight shock and handed the jar filled with the mushrooms to him. "Here." He said, tone verging on urgent."Will this do?" He asked and the doctor was on his way to where Daisy lay resting without saying even a word to Grant.

Grant sighed and followed him up, waiting and watching as Doctor Earnhardt administered the antidote to her. "Grant…" Daisy murmured in a light and drowsy voice as he noticed him. Grant could see that she was bruised to hell and still seemed to be out of sorts, "It's you…" She exclaimed with a breathless sort of delight present in her tone of voice.

Daisy didn't look great right now but she would be better soon, he reassured himself. The doctor seemed like he was short a couple of fuses, but he seemed like he was a more than capable chemist and if he could craft enough drugs to keep himself constantly high, he was able to make more of the antidote that his girlfriend so desperately needed.

Daisy would be herself in no time and when she recovered, Grant wouldn't be surprised if she demanded to come along and rescue their friends with him. "How are you feeling?" He asked her, sitting himself down on the edge of the bed at her side.

"You got away, that's what I'm feeling!" She had a dazed out smile on her face as she reached towards him, grabbing onto his hand and squeezing it softly for a moment before she let him go.

"That doctor, he's… something." Grant commented, in an attempt to lighten the tense mood somewhat and maybe even lessen his concerns about the man.

"Oh, he's harmless." Daisy replied dismissively, "He's kinda sweet actually. He carried me here… I escaped from the convoy and at some point, I passed out." She looked down for a moment, "The doctor saved me!"

"Well, I'm glad you made it. It's been really rough." He said in a somber tone and Daisy must have seen that something was wrong

"Grant, what's wrong?"

"It's Jason. He's still back at that camp, he wouldn't leave." He blurted out. Daisy didn't say anything, she just looked at him oddly, waiting for him to continue on. So he did. "I don't know why but he was acting strange, like he didn't think that Vaas – that that psychopath who kidnapped us wouldn't hurt him or something…" he trailed off with a slight groan, "It just doesn't make any sense."

"Jason's strong." She said, reassuringly. "He can make it through, I know he can. He'll be fine, Grant, I can promise you that he will be fine."

"Are you gonna be okay?" He asked, his tone suddenly becoming very business-like. "I have to go and talk to the doctor about the others." She nodded and told him, voice as low as a whisper, to go.

Earnhardt was waiting in the corner of the room, looking like he had been trying to not appear as if he was eavesdropping. "Can I talk to you?" He asked and then, when the doctor agreed, "I want to thank you for saving her." He said sincerely and firmly.

"Think nothing of it."

"Three of my friends and my little brothers are missing. When I find them – can I bring them here?" He asked in a leading manner like he was expecting a firm 'yes'.

"Absolutely not." Earnhardt replied, "I can't afford to have Vaas' captives here! His men buy product from me Todo El Tiempo!"

Grant was about to say something back when Daisy piped up, "Please Doctor." she interrupted the two of them, "Let him bring them here. They'll die otherwise."

The doctor was at Daisy's side in a moment, "Agnes!" He exclaimed, looking at her in a paternalistic manner. Grant found it odd but didn't say anything. "How can I refuse you? Of course, they can stay." He agreed, "Oh… I'm gonna need a double dose after this. To calm my nerves…" He slurred, already intoxicated on something as he sat on the bed and squeezed Daisy's hand.

"Wait here, alright? I'm gonna go find the others." He requested in a low voice before he was down the stairs and out of the house. He had a lot of work to do and he couldn't afford to stop and spend any more time with his girlfriend, no matter how much he wanted to.

* * *

The Grand Island Port Hotel was a shady looking place that gave Jason the impression that it could crumble to the ground at any moment. He looked at it worriedly for a moment before he was running up to the hotel as quickly and quietly as he could.

He couldn't afford to be seen by the any of the pirates guarding the place – if they did, all of them would swarm around the place to try and get him, kill him or whatever, and one of them was bound to get away and tell Vaas or Hoyt what he was doing. That wouldn't end well. Not for any of them. Not for him, not for Vaas and certainly not for Liza.

At the very least, Vaas had made sure that he was armed to the teeth – he had been given a sniper rifle, a compound bow, a pistol with a silencer on it and a sawed-off shotgun as well as a few different sorts of throwables. He was donning a Kevlar vest, as well as a long neckerchief to cover up the majority of his face. He planned on getting in and out without anyone noticing him and if anyone saw him then they needed to die – nothing personal, really, he was just doing whatever needed to be done. He walked towards the building and searched around until he found a safe vantage point. Once he did, he crouched down on the ground and took out his camera.

The hotel was sparsely guarded and it didn't look to Jason as if many of them were even paying attention to what was going on around him – that worked out perfectly well for him, especially when he noticed an open window in the back of the building that had nobody moving around it.

He crept up to the window, making sure to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible until he was pressed right up against it. His fingers braced against the rusty window almost painfully as he pulled himself into the building. As soon as he was in the room, he spotted a pirate sitting down on a chair with a rifle clasped in hand. Jason let out a long-suffering sigh and aimed his handgun at the back of the mans' head, he held his breath and pulled the trigger – killing him instantly.

Jason felt the tiniest inkling of guilt – an alarmingly small amount of guilt, considering that he had never killed anyone before – as the pirate bowled himself over and collapsed in death. Jason hoisted him up and dragged him over to the window to drop him out of it with a loud "SPLAT" sounding out as he hit the ground.

The omega let out a disgusted scoff and made his way down the hall, crouched down and moving quietly and slowly with his gun in hand. He searched around the area for a while – taking out each pirate that he saw and hiding them along the way in his search for her. After a bit of searching – and a lot more blood on his hands than he was comfortable looking at – he found her, bound up in a chair with a cloth gag haphazardly stuffed in her mouth.

Jason frowned and pulled the gag out of her mouth, "Are you okay?" He whispered to her as he cut the rope from her wrists and ankles. Liza murmured something affirmatively and pulled herself up to her feet, only to crumble down to the floor when she took a few steps forward. "Shit." He murmured to himself as he helped her off of the ground. "How long were you tied up there like that?"

Liza shrugged at that, taking to leaning on Jason for support as she got her bearings. "I don't know. A few days maybe?" She guessed, "They just left me tied up here and I thought that they were just going to leave me to starve here. I was so scared."

Jason's mind was immediately brought back to the very real danger that the two of them were in and his knowledge that the longer they stayed here, the more danger they would be in sprung him right into action. "We're going to have to jump out the window at the end of the hall." He told her, eliciting an incredulous look out of her. "It's the only option we have here," he explained, speaking in a soft and rapid-fire sort of tone. "Look I just, I was lucky that I found you as easily as I did… and I had some help but- the point is that I'm not sure just how many of those guys are in the building and I know that there aren't

"I… okay, I trust you." She acquiesced with a wary sort of look on her face like her agreement came out entirely of desperation – which it definitely was. "Let's go," she said. The two of them made their way down the hall, moving quickly and quietly – making sure not to rustle any attention out of the pirates moving on the floor below and before either of them knew it, they were standing in front of the window – staring at the space below them with a sense of trepidation.

Neither of them really wanted to make the leap down, but they knew that it was inevitable, that they really had no choice in the matter. Jason frowned and held his breath as he took the jump down first so that when Liza followed right behind him he was able to catch her by her legs and make the tumbledown easier for her. It didn't stop either of them from rolling down onto the ground, accidentally entangling their limbs with one another in a way that bruised and battered the both of them.

The two of them ran and ran the whole way down the road as they escaped, refusing to look back at the hotel until Jason found the truck that he had stowed away down the road at least a quarter of a mile away. As soon as they got in the vehicle – Liza in the driver's seat and Jason riding passenger – they took a moment to quietly and exhaustively gloat.

"H-holy shit," Jason exclaimed, one hand pressed against his chest and the other leaning against the dashboard. "I can't believe we… that was so fucking lucky!" Pure dumb luck was all that Jason could think to attribute it to, as he had such little training that that was all that it could be in his mind.

"Yeah… lucky." Liza replied in a dismal sort of tone as she started up the car and drove forward down the road, "Where are we supposed to go, anyway?" She asked. Jason was about to answer her when he saw a bright red truck looming in the distance – he let out a short litany of curses.

He knew well enough that if that truck moved close enough to meet them then they would be screwed. He kept looking back at it with a nervous sort of hopefulness emanating around him – like if he kept his eyes on the hotel then none of the pirates would move an inch forward. "Keep going." He told her.

"Keep going? Keep going where, Jason?" Liza implored him, hoping for some sort of plan to come out of the other's mouth. "Do you even know where we're supposed to go?" She asked with a tone of voice that bordered on exasperated.

"It doesn't matter just keep going!" Jason snapped at her, "It was a fucking miracle we got out of there as easily as we did but they might catch up with us any second now. So go!" Liza grumbled to herself about what an ass Jason was being and how he had no plan but still, she obeyed him nonetheless.

Jason dug around in his pockets for a few moments before he pulled out what looked like an old fashioned cell phone, "Vaas," He panted, sounding horribly out of breath. Liza's eyes widened as she heard that name. She knew who that was, and it only meant bad news in her mind. "We got out just fine. Now can you please tell me you found someplace safe I can have her go." He asked quickly.

Vaas' voice was ringing out on the other end in moments, "There's a doctor we buy product from northeast of you. I'll send you the coordinates right now. See, this doctor, he has a cave underneath his house. Bring her there and she should be fine." He explained in a low voice, "You come back once you get that blanquita there." It wasn't really a request – or even a question – but Jason felt compelled to answer him nonetheless with a quick agreement before he stuffed the phone back into his pockets and took out a small handheld GPS.

He looked over at Liza and smiled at her nervously. "We'll be out of here soon," He said in a reassuring manner. "There's a fork upcoming, take a right."They drove like that for some time – mostly in silence, with Jason cutting in occasionally with directions – until they were parked at the white colonial house, belonging to Dr. Earnhardt.

Liza jumped out of the car and was quick to ask Jason a few questions, in rapid-fire succession, that she had kept quiet about for long enough, "So, you were talking to that guy that kidnapped us." She coughed awkwardly, "And he was helping us, which is odd, for obvious reasons. So my question is, why is he doing that? What does he benefit from that?" She asked, the question so leading that Jason gave her an incredulous look that she would phrase it like that.

Jason bristled slightly at her line of questioning but he recovered quickly with the understanding that Liza was a well-meaning sort of person and this whole situation was weird, "Um, yeah." He said, "Vaas is, he's my alpha – like my true alpha if you can believe that. So, uh, that's why he's helping me." he explained as quickly and concisely as he was able, his tone verging on awkward. Luckily she hadn't caught sight of the mark on his neck, "So that's what's happening right now."

"Oh," She said, looking down almost like she was disappointed. It wasn't hard for Jason to understand why – he and Liza used to date, years ago and they had been pretty serious. It hadn't worked out for them, but they had stayed pretty close as friends, up until this point. "I'm guessing that you're happy with all of this?" She asked him with a tone that suggested that she was desperately hoping for a 'no' to come out of his mouth.

"Well…" Jason said in reply as he slid himself down onto the floor and walked towards her, "It's just really complicated, you know?" He said, reluctant to explain himself, though he knew that he had to if he wanted Liza to stop judging him like she was. "This whole situation is really weird, fucked up and complicated, I know that. Vaas is…" he frowned as he found no way to properly defend him, so he ended up settling for more of a tepid defense of him. "Well, he's insane. I'd be a liar if I said he wasn't and he is almost always using something but he's been good – to me and I like being with him."

He made it out like it was simple, but he knew – and he could bet, without even saying a word to her that Liza knew – that it wasn't. There was no way that what he and Vaas had with each other could ever be thought of as simple. It was intense, irreversible and almost unwanted in how overwhelmingly their bond consumed his thoughts and feelings. "Are you going to stay here?" Liza asked, her voice so quiet and so hesitant that he barely heard her, "With him?"

It didn't surprise him that she would ask that, but his face still twisted as he thought about it for just a moment,"I don't know. Probably." He said with a shrug, "I don't think I really have much of a choice." He didn't like the idea of leaving Vaas – he was inextricably tied to the other man and if he went and got all of his friends back and then left the island then he might suffer from Broken Bond Syndrome.

He didn't want to end up going back to California and being thrown into a deep depression that might end up killing him – he was almost entirely sure that his odds of surviving the mental strife he would suffer from being entirely separated from Vaas were next to none, so he didn't want to chance it.

Liza understood exactly what he was saying and thinking and decided to drop the subject entirely. The two of them walked down the hill and into the cave. As they walked through, they were surprised to see Daisy sitting in one corner of the cave, working on what looked like an almost entirely broken boat.

Jason was shocked to see her sitting there – looking like she had been banged up to hell, but ultimately still alive and well enough to be moving around. He was so shocked that he stood there, slack-jawed like some kind of idiot for a few moments before he allowed himself to recover while Liza ran up to her to pull her into a tight hug. As the two of them pulled away, Daisy noticed Jason standing there and she vaulted towards him to pull him just as close and tight as she had held Liza.

"Jason!" She exclaimed, hugging him so close that he struggled to breathe a little bit – even for an alpha, she had always been insanely strong for a woman of her stature. "You're okay! Oh, Grant will be so relieved to find out that you're alright."

Jason was taken aback by that. A part of him had been coming to terms with the idea that he might not see Grant for a long time if he had even survived his escape from Vaas and the rest of the pirates in the first place. "Wait, you've seen him?" He exclaimed as he pulled back from her embrace, "How is he? Did he seem like he was alright? It's pretty dangerous out here."

Daisy took a few moments to answer him, trying to phrase her words very carefully. "Physically he was just fine but he did seem like he was really troubled," She answered cautiously, "He was worried about you the most, I think." Jason knew exactly what she was implying, but he let her continue on. "Maybe you should stay here, he's bound to come back sooner or later and see you."

He frowned at that, his shoulder slumping in visible disappointment in himself. "Oh, I can't. I can't stay here. I have to go back to-" and he was about to explain himself the best that he could, gearing himself up for the two of them to tear into him when he felt Liza squeeze his arm in a comforting and reassuring manner. It made it easier for him to continue on and as he explained himself in an almost nervous manner, he could see Daisy's understanding of what had happened between him and Vaas and why he couldn't stay unfold with every word that he spoke.

"Oh," She said intelligently in response, a shell shocked expression forming on her face. She didn't speak for a few moments before she told him in a low voice that she understood. Daisy didn't bother moralizing at him or expressing any of her concerns. She understood that her opinions on it didn't really matter, but still, she couldn't help but be a little worried for Jason's safety and sanity. "Can you at least stay and rest for a little?" She asked, figuring that that was the best that she could do.

In any other situation, Jason might have objected – but as it stood he was exhausted and he doubted that he could make the journey across the island with how he felt. "I… okay you know what, you're right. I need to rest." He acquiesced, "I will…I'll stay for an hour or two and if Grant somehow shows up by then, that would be great." He sat down and made a place on the floor to rest himself up for the journey ahead. "But I doubt it. Knowing Grant, he's probably busy as all hell."

Jason laughed at that in agreement, knowing that he would be busy too – even though he was much less anxious about the duty that he had to his friends while Grant was running around doing the same – if he wanted to free all of his friends, he would need to be smart, he would need to keep his ear to the ground for the locations of any of them that were still locked up and waiting to be either freed, killed or sold into slavery and not get himself killed in the process.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time that Jason came back to the encampment, the whole place was dark and overcast. Mostly everyone, save a few small groups that were patrolling the area, in the place was settled down and the camp was mostly quiet other than the sounds of the occasional predator roaming around in their cages or the other hostages – bound and gagged as he had been, sobbing and curled up on the dirt – but he tried to not pay any attention to them if he could manage it.

The last thing that he needed was to have leftover feelings of guilt and worry for people that he didn't know, especially not right now. The first thing that Jason thought to do after he had rid himself of all the weapons that he had on him, was to clean himself up in the showers. He was so dirty; so covered in dirt, grime, sweat and blood that he couldn't bring himself to sleep or do anything else beforehand.

Jason was quick but thorough about getting himself clean, with only a few thoughts about how much he missed showering at home in California – a few minor complaints crossed his mind here and there; like how the water was so hot that it was scalding or how he felt so dirty that he ended up scrubbing himself until his skin was rubbed raw. None of his complaints really mattered, in the grand scheme of things. Not when all of his friends were trapped on different parts of the island – waiting like sitting ducks to be rescued or forced into slavery.

He was dripping wet and shivering by the time that he got himself out. Jason stood in front of the cheap, almost funhouse-like mirror as he patted his hair dry, partially just so he could narcissistically admire himself in it. Within moments, Jason found his eyes wandering towards the imposing scar on his throat – it had healed up nicely, most signs of the initial trauma had practically disappeared overnight.

His fingers trailed over the mark in a curious yet lazy manner as he thought about his situation, how surreal that the last few weeks had been for him. He, his brothers and his friends had been kidnapped and nearly sold into slavery – then he had been bonded, purely out of dumb luck, or fate or some kind of fucked up, backward thinking trickster deity watching over him.

The whole situation was so odd and fucked up that the only way that Jason could think to cope with it was to fully rationalize it and accept it as his new normal – what else could he do, really. "Fuck it." He muttered to himself as he haphazardly covered himself and walked out, his words mirroring all of his thoughts on the situation.

Jason made his way around the camp, walking with a lethargic sort of pace to it as he searched around for the reinforced shack – it was really more like a cabin, compared to the other shelters around the camp – that he and Vaas usually slept in. He found the shack after a few minutes of searching around and let a sigh of relief at the thought of laying himself down for what was probably going to be put in a sleep that was so heavy that it might turn into an exhaustion-fueled coma.

When he was in the room, he didn't pay much attention at all to his surroundings as he lazily stripped himself down until he was wearing little more than his underwear – it was too hot to be wearing anything more than that to sleep on Rook – that he noticed Vaas laying on the mattress, entirely nude and poised on his back with his arm laying over his face to cover his eyes.

Jason smiled to himself and let out a light scoff as he snuck himself onto the mattress next to him. Vaas instinctively wrapped an arm around Jason and pulled him in tight – eliciting a small noise out of Jason as he braced against the contact. The alpha nuzzled against his neck and instinctively took to scenting at his bonding gland until he was satisfied with what he found, "Jason?" He muttered in a sleep laden and gruff sounding voice that was so low that it bordered right on a growl. "Pendejo. Don't sneak up on me like that, I could have killed you."

Jason responded first by curling up closer against him incidentally wriggling his hips against the others groin as he did so, "Mm, yeah. That's true. You could have killed me…but you didn't. So it's probably fine, right?" He asked in a rhetorical sort of way as Vaas lazily pressed biting kisses all over his neck.

After a while, when the attention got to be a little too much, Jason tried to squirm away. Vaas didn't let him up though, opting instead to push the omega down until he was laying flat on his stomach, trapped beneath him. The alpha's rough and calloused hands ran down his back until his palms were resting on top of Jason's tailbone.

Vaas practically tore off his underwear in his hasty attempts to get them off of him, shocking the omega into a frightening sort of alertness – a wakefulness that was so tightly wound that it bordered on a fight or flight response. Somehow, it only made things better for him and Jason made a few small and mewling noise as two of Vaas' fingers dipped inside of him and fucked into him.

Vaas' movements were rough and hard and perfect for Jason until the omega's entrance was slick and stretched open. "Shit…" Jason muttered, unconsciously pushing his hips up and grinding his ass against Vaas' groin. "You're good at that." He complimented in a drowsy sort of tone as his hand slowly traveled down his waist to get at his leaking cock, trapped between his stomach and the bed.

"So, so good." He babbled quietly, coaxing it to hardness and stroking at it with an almost desperate sort of vigor to it. With the state that he was in, Vaas could do whatever he wanted to Jason and he could have the omega smiling and moaning in pleasure at the feeling of it.

Vaas squeezed Jason's hips possessively in response, easing the omega's hips upwards until he was on his knees with his chest still pressed into the mattress, before taking his own leaking cock in hand and leading it towards Jason's waiting entrance. He was so impatient that he couldn't restrain himself from snapping his hips all the way forward, burying his dick deep inside of the omega.

Jason let out a shuddering, pleasured sigh and squeezed his thighs together, "Fucking… tight, Jason. Mi Amante, mi corazón. So fucking perfect." Vaas grunted in his ear, voice hoarse low and husky as his hands wandered all over the omega's body.

Jason pressed himself down further into the mattress – practically burrowing himself into it as Vaas fucked into him hard and rough while Jason desperately stroked his own leaking cock. He was close, so close to coming and every thrust inside of him sent him closer and closer to the edge.

It wasn't long until the alpha pulled Jason back by his hair until their lips met, kissing him hard on the mouth as he came. A few guttural moans erupted from within him as Vaas' knot swelled up inside of him, interlocking the two of them together right as Jason came.

The two of them sidled down until they were laying on their side, with one Vaas' arms possessively braced over the slight swell of his hip. Jason was completely exhausted and totally content as the two of them lay together. "How'd your rescue mission go?" Vaas asked him suddenly, speaking in an exhausted sort of voice. "You have to kill a lot of my men back there?" He asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"I- yeah, it went well. I did have to kill a couple of them." Jason answered after a few moments of hesitance. "They were in the way, you know. Don't worry though, no one saw my face or anything." He added in a dismissive sort of way, "I was totally stealth and I got the job fucking done. It was awesome, actually." He let out a high and soft giggle. "I'm really surprised how awesome it actually was. I was like a god damn action hero or something!" He exclaimed. "It was just… it was great. I'd do it again anytime. Hell, I might have to do it a lot more, if I want to save all of my friends from…"

He muttered the last part under his breath and trailed off until he was almost inaudible, but Vaas caught it and pressed in closer to him, impossibly close seeing as how they were tied together. "What, save them from me?" He asked in a laughing sort of tone. Jason nodded reluctantly and he laughed, "Mi Amante, I'm not the one that you should be worrying about."

"Yeah, I know that," Jason replied quietly, in a petulant and stubborn sort of tone. He had come to discover in the time that he had known him that Vaas was a much lesser evil than Hoyt. It wasn't like he was nice – even if he was a lot nicer to Jason than he was to anyone else – or like he was at all non-threatening, but Jason knew that he was in no danger from Vaas. "I just- this situation is so god damn weird, I'm still getting used to it all."

"I know," Vaas affirmed, leading Jason to babble on a little more.

"And I'm getting my friends freed, whether you like it or not." He stated in a flippant sort of way, just to let the alpha know where he stood. "I have to do this. I need to."

Vaas laughed at that, a full-on cackle at Jason's macho display, "You're suddenly acting so tough, Jason!" He commented in a marveled sort of tone. "The first time I get my dick in you and you get all mouthy." He pressed a few fluttery kisses along the back of Jason's shoulder blade. "Whose to say I don't just fucking stop you, hm?

"Yeah?" Jason hummed back, amused. "How exactly would you stop me?" He asked it in a baiting and antagonistic sort of tone. In that moment he could feel Vaas' knot subside, allowing the alpha to ease out of him. "Just out of curiosity." He added for good measure.

Vaas answered him not with words but by manipulating Jason onto his back so that the omega was pressed down below him, giggling like an idiot at all of the manhandling that was being done to him. It was elating, in a way that was ineffable – that he couldn't really describe, even to himself.

He let out a few more manic giggles as Vaas kissed him possessively, "Maybe I just keep you on my dick all of the time, hermano." He said, half-jokingly. "You can't run off to save your friends when we're tied together." Vaas kissed him one more time before he sat up and grabbed a cigar box from one of the side tables in the room. Out of curiosity, Jason quickly glanced over at it – seeing that it was some kind of ground down drug. Vaas packed it down into a glass blown pipe that looked like it had seen years of regular use and knowing the alpha, it probably had.

He lit the pipe up and took a deep, deep drag before he offered it to Jason. After a few moments of apprehension, the omega took it from him and took a drag of it himself. It was harsh on his lungs and he ended up in a coughing fit. A part of him thought to ask about what was in it, but he thought better of it at the last moment – it was just better, he reminded himself, to go with the flow of things nowadays. It just made more sense.

Besides, the warm and fuzzy feeling that it gave him was more than enough of a positive to make up for any hesitance that he might have for taking it. He just couldn't bring himself to care about the consequences of his actions. Come to think of it, he hadn't cared much about them in the past, either.

* * *

When he had returned to Dr. Earnhardt's house to check on Daisy, he discovered both Liza and Daisy sitting in the cave below it. They had told him, in not so many words – that Jason was running free around the island and that he had somehow been bonded to the man that had kidnapped all of them.

While a part of him had reviled that that had happened, it made a scary amount of sense to him, in a strange sort of way. Jason had been acting cagey the last time that he had seen him, dodging every question that Grant tried to ask him about why he was so adamant about staying at the pirate's encampment. So it wasn't like it came out of nowhere, but it still made him wonder what the hell Jason had gotten himself into. He didn't have much time to worry about it though, because the next thing he knew – Dennis was calling him back with the promise of more power, to unleash his tatau even further.

The temple that Dennis took him to was like a relic that had been frozen in time for years – perfectly preserved with all of its intricate patterns of stone, metal and wood kept intact. It was beautiful, Grant thought, and it made him wonder what the rest of the island might be like had it not been invaded and seized upon over and over again like it had been.

"Follow me," Dennis said, ushering him forward with a stroke of his palm. Grant did as he was told, walking a short distance behind the other man as they walked along the path. The two of them walked for some time until they were stopped by two less than friendly looking Rakyat warriors.

"Dennis!" One of them shouted, looking offended and put off as all hell. "You let an outsider in here?"

Dennis was quick to jump to Grant's defense, "This one is different from all the rest, I have found one who will not fail." He said in a reassuring sort of way. Grant really didn't appreciate being talked about like he was some kind of thing, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

"Get back." The other sneered as Grant took a step forward, things were about to escalate when an airy, feminine voice interrupted them. "Berhenti!" She shouted and it stopped all of them in their tracks. A beautiful woman with braids trailing down her back and an almost intimidating presence came out of the shadows. He guessed that this must be Citra, "Let me see your arm." She commanded and Grant obeyed automatically, without thinking of it at all.

His tatau had been coming along nicely – he had been hunting and killing regularly, maybe even more than he did on his tour of Iraq. It unsettled him just how much blood he had shed, but he shook off the thought of it. He could have a guilty conscience when they were back home and safe.

"This is Grant," Dennis interrupted, "The one I have been telling you about."

"Hi-" Grant started, only to have guns pointed at his face, shutting him up right quick.

"Do they teach you to speak without permission in America?" She asked, tone cool and menacing – like she was fully assured that she could have him gunned down in a heartbeat and he was sure that she could.

"No," He replied steadily, "I learned that in France."

"Senapanka Bawa." She said and the men lowered their guns. She walked towards him and, before he could react, grabbed his arm to examine the tatau up close. "You are brave to joke in the face of death." She complimented. "Hm, fine work…" She hummed as she reached into her skirt, quickly pulling a short handmade knife out. "I'll give it back to you after I cut it off!"

For a moment, Grant thought that he was going to die right there – with a knife inches away from one of his arteries and two gunned men in front of him, he didn't think he had many options to defend himself – but as quickly as she took it out, "I thought you liked jokes." She mocked before circling him like prey. "Hm, very few outsiders have seen this temple. The inner courtyard fewer still." She stopped in front of him, "Why are you here?"

"I need the strength to defeat Vaas and save my friends." He said plainly.

"Oh is that all?" She sneered at him, "I will not command my army for you. You are an outsider." She had said, "outsider," like it was some kind of dirty word.

"Well, then I will become a warrior." He snapped, coming off as exasperated. He had taken orders before, he had killed before,

"Very funny." She mocked him once again, "Please leave." And with that, she walked off, not looking back at him once.

"He took my brothers!" He shouted desperately as she walked away from him back to her temple. His words managed to get through to her and they stopped her right in her tracks.

"Vaas did?" She asked, barely looking at him front the corner of her eyes. He nodded, "And I will do anything to get them back." He said, and he meant it too. It was only then that she bothered to listen to him. Handing him a heavy stone vase and telling him to bring back what had been taken – then they could talk. He didn't trust it and he doubted that it would help him much, but when Dennis advised him to drink – he realized that he had no other choice but to obey and be taken on another eye-opening trip.

* * *

When Grant woke up from his vision, he was on the ground and Dennis was standing over him with an intent look on his face. "I know what I need to get – some sort of knife." He answered whatever questions that Dennis had that were left unsaid. He looked to Dennis for clues and the other man obliged him, telling him about a shantytown to the west, where a man named Buck lived. He, Dennis said, would have all of the answers that he needed.

The infrastructure of the town was crumbling down, but it was well lit enough to make his way around as he navigated towards a tavern. The man that he had seen in his vision was surely to be there, something deep inside of him – something that he could not call to name, but knew was there – told him that he was who Grant needed to look for. He would lead him to what he needed to find.

Grant was uneasy and cagey as he sat down at the poker table and started to play – keeping his eye towards the door at most moments. It was during his first or his second hand that he walked in – the man was middle-aged, stocky and dressed in what had to be the sleaziest looking leisure suit that he had ever seen on a human being.

The men at the table start talking amongst themselves and Grant half-listens to the discussion as he observes the man behind them. "You hear about Snow White?" The first one asks, eliciting an aggravated sort of response out of the second one.

"Shut up about Snow White!" The second man snapped like they had had this exchange enough times to drive him over the edge just by the mere thought of it coming up again. "Every time you tell this story! We play…"

"What the hell are you talking about?" The third man asked.

The second man explained in a deadpan sort of way as he dealt cards out, "Snow White escapes from Vaas' prison camp, next thing you know he's killing guys with a machete." He said. Grant could barely stop himself from laughing as he realized that he was the Snow White that they were talking about.

It was such an odd, comical nickname for someone like him – he had to wonder who the genius was that came up with it. "Ah! That's the worst version of the story I ever heard!" The first guy snapped in an exasperated sort of way. "You ruined the drama!"

"Sounds like Hoyt needs to step in." The third guy replied, gaining murmured agreements and mutters of how Hoyt would make quick work of this Snow White. Grant ignored most of it, thinking that it was nonsense, but he couldn't exactly ignore it when the second guy looked at Grant almost knowingly and said, "Hoyt's an artist. He'll kill this one special. Am I right?"

"What did you say he looked like again?" The third guy said. Grant could feel that they might be suspicious that Snow White was sitting in at their table – he didn't exactly blend in with the crowd after all – and he put all of his chips forward to distract them. "All in," he said, shutting all three of them up.

Right then the man that he had been looking forward came to their table, eyeing Grant purposefully the entire time. "Nice play." He complimented with a tone that gave the praise no weight as he put out his cigar on the table. Grant collected his meager winnings and made his way out of the tavern, knowing that he needed to follow this guy. He was the key to this, he just had to be.

Grant kept a low profile as he tailed the man – not exactly an easy feat, but he managed – until he was walking into a shack that led him into a deathtrap. Somehow, the American flag staring him in the face did nothing to make him feel safer.

"You have ten seconds to tell me who you are before I remotely detonate the C-4 under the table and this whole place explodes." The mans' voice came out clear and fast, barely taking the time to breathe with how fast he spoke.

"Jesus Christ!" He shouted at that in alarm. The situation had gone from odd to downright insane in seconds and he could barely keep up.

"I doubt it." The intercom replied, "Five seconds."

"Uhh, Grant- Grant Brody!"

"Really."

"Yes!" He snapped, anger winning out over his fear of death.

"So, you're Snow White."

"Yes, er, no! I don't know, which one doesn't get me blown up?"

"A pragmatist." He replied, "Promising. But do you consider yourself a patriot, Mr. Brody? Thing is, a real patriot doesn't just put his hand on his heart while holding a hot dog at the ball game. That's a gosh darn cakewalk, pardon my French! The Real Patriot suckles at the teat of Lady Liberty, upon hearing of the death of a brother at war, The Real Patriot asks, 'Did we win?' and then rejoices at the pronouncement of victory." He monologued on and on, like the sound of his own voice was worth potential death and hellfire. "So, are you A Real Patriot or one of those Walt Whitman hippies that cries when the jean store runs out of pocket squares?"

"A real patriot," Grant said, aiming for genuine but too shocked at the bizarre end that this recon had taken. Apparently, that was the right thing to say because the next thing that he knew, he was telling Grant about the possible location of both Oliver and Keith with the explanation that it was his job to know the island and that he would be willing to trade favors for his help. That was a deal that Grant could not afford to turn down, so of course, he said yes.

Suddenly a passageway opened up and he curiously walked down the steps of it – unfolding a secret room that looked right out of a bad James Bond rip off. Computers and surveillance equipment littered the space, as well as an ample amount of weaponry. He was called to the man's attention when he said Grant's name in an odd way – like he couldn't quite figure out how to pronounce it right.

"What are you, some kind of spy?" He asked flippantly.

"I'm not gonna confirm or deny that." So probably yes, Grant thought in a glib sort of way before the man continued on. "Just messin' with ya, I work for Langley. Agent Willis Huntley."

Finally, something went right. He thought that a government agent could get them out right quick – he was sorely disappointed when Willis told him that he was embedded, practically helpless to really help Grant in the state that he was in. "Right, of course, you are." He muttered to himself, "So you're alone here." he inferred.

It turned out that, no, Willis had a whole team – under deeper cover than even him, he couldn't even really communicate with them directly. He had a lot of good intel, but he needed more – right from the source of it all. That was where Grant came in – he couldn't see what burning down pot fields would do but piss his kidnappers off, but it wasn't like he really had much of a choice in the matter.

"Alright, fine." Grant said, taking the flamethrower from Willis' hands. "I'll get it done." He promised the CIA Agent, barely looking at him as he made his way out of the small shack. He would have thought that he left all of this behind when he finished his tour of Iraq, but apparently, he had a lot more of it to do, if he wanted to get all of them home in one piece and breathing.

* * *

Jason settled down into the truck, sliding down in the seat until his back was pressed down into it. Vaas had practically dragged him into the vehicle with the promise that he would be taking him somewhere "interesting" or at least different. Jason had of course gone along with it, more out of boredom than anything else, but his agreement didn't seem to matter all that much.

The two of them made their way around the aptly named shantytown, walking around the place for a bit and seeing the sights about the place. People cleared the way when Vaas walked towards them in fear of what he might do. Jason smiled as the villagers steered clear of them.

The feeling that he was walking hand in hand with an apex predator – someone who was terrifying and untouchable like Vaas so clearly was to the Islanders – was thrilling to him and it gave him a power trip the likes that he had never felt before. When they make their way into the tavern, that sort of powerful feeling persisted as he saw the fearful looks on the faces of the people drinking at the bar.

As soon as the two of them sat down at the bar, one of the men came up and slid Vaas a bottle of amber liquor and a few cigars. Jason let out a snort at the show of deference and Vaas gave him a curious sort of look, before lighting up one of the cigars while Jason poured himself a round of shots.

The two of them drank and smoked together for some time, enjoying each others' company – and probably making asses of themselves – the whole time until Vaas' comm started blaring. The alpha growled at whoever was on the receiving end of the call, "What? No. Why the fuck do you need me, then? You can't get it done yourself? Alright… fuck, fucking fine. I'll be there."

"Is everything alright?" Jason asked, concern marring his expression as he spoke. Vaas responded first by handing him a wad of cash and a handgun. Jason pocketed the cash quickly and lay the gun out on the table below him. "I guess that I can take that as a no." He muttered more to himself.

"Someone fucked up and I got to fix it." Vaas told him, "Just fucking- stay here and wait for me. If anyone so much as looks at you wrong, you can use that." Jason pulled an incredulous face at that – he didn't think that he should be going all Rambo in the middle of a bar for no reason – but he kept a cautious hand on top of the weapon, just in case he might need it later.

Vaas left the tavern and steamrolled himself out of the town quickly, causing a little chaos as he did so – if all of the shouting that he heard from outside was any indicator of anything. Jason buckled down and prepared to lay low until his alpha returned – a plan that failed in about two minutes when a bombastic, staggering man in a Hawaiian shirt came blustering towards him.

At first, Jason tried to ignore him – as he did with all drunken looking men like him – but the man didn't allow himself to be ignored. "Do I know you?" He asked, getting up close in his personal space. "I swear that I've seen you before, or heard you or-"

"Ease up, Buck." One of the men warned, although his voice warbled slightly like he was afraid of the Australian man. Jason didn't really wonder why he seemed so nervous, this Buck guy bothered him and set his instincts on fire. Jason turned his head away from the man, closing himself off and keeping his mouth shut.

"Relax, alright?" Buck told the man, who backed off almost instantly. "I was just asking this one a question." Out of nowhere, Buck leaned in too close, until his nose was practically buried in Jason's throat. The omega let out a sound of disgust as the slimy man scented him.

"You are an omega. I could have sworn that you were an alpha, you got someone's scent all over you." Buck said, in a way that made it sound like a revelation in and of itself. "But you smell so familiar, so damn familiar that I almost thought you-" He cut himself off, a look of realization crossing his face. "Oh, I know you! Yeah, yeah…you're that tart that he bought off of Hoyt. Yeah… he seemed really taken with you."

"Excuse me?" Jason scoffed with incredulity at the other man's words. Buck stepped forward and Jason stepped back until his back was pressed into the wall. He had a bad feeling about this man – like if he let his guard down for more than a second, that Buck would try to do something to horrid and obscene to him.

Something that he wouldn't be able to come back from, no matter how hard he tried to. "Can you step the fuck away from me?" He snapped when he noticed that the mans' advances were not easing up even a little bit. His fingers blindly searched for the gun on the bar counter and once he had it in his hand, he didn't even think to shoot it – he just reared it back and smacked the man upside the head until he fell down onto his knees, grasping his head and groaning in pain.

Jason looked at the man impassively, not moving or saying a word, as Buck recovered and stood back up to face the omega again. Bucks' expression morphed several times as he touched the wound obfuscating the side of his head. He went from surprise to anger to a sort of impressed effect. "Well. I'm sure, I'll be seeing you soon Jason." He said, leaving Jason to wonder how the fuck he had even learned his name.

* * *

By the time that Vaas returned to the bar, Jason had been consistently heavily drinking since Buck had left. Jason was so out of it that he could barely restrain himself from shouting out every curse word that he knew as Vaas came up behind him and squeezed his shoulders, startling him out of the strange headspace that that Australian pervert had left him in. "Fucking- Jesus Christ. You scared the crap out of me. Don't do that!" He snapped, turning around quickly as Vaas cackled at him in mock.

"You know, sometimes you're so fucking high strung, Jason!" He teased, gauging little reaction out of the omega save for a withering look as he flipped Vaas off. After a few minutes, the humor died down a bit for Vaas, "What? Did one of these fucking pendejos mess with you while I was gone?"

Jason faltered slightly, "Uh, yeah- I mean, he's gone so…whatever, but this weird Australian guy came up to me while you were gone and," He sighed in exasperation and shuddered a bit at the memory. "He just gave me the fucking creeps. He kept talking to me, kept touching me. He just wouldn't leave me alone and then he tried to scent me… he was just real weird. I don't know, I don't want really want to talk about it anymore."

Vaas groaned as he realized just who Jason was talking about, there was only one man like that on Rook and it was someone that he didn't want Jason to have to meet for a long time. "Ese maldito pervertido bambi…" (That fucking pervert, Bambi)

Jason frowned, "I take it this guy is someone you know?" He inferred with a wry sort of grin on his face. His mood was almost instantly lightened by his partners' reaction, for some reason it was comforting for him to see that Vaas was just as disgusted by this guy as he was.

"Fucking Bambi!" Vaas snapped back, "He's one of Hoyt's fucking favorite hit men. They spend their off time together." He answered, "Fucker just pisses me off and I don't like the idea of him touching you."

"Well, I don't either." Jason interrupted flippantly, Vaas paid him little mind and continued on to tell him that he was pretty sure that Jason was exactly Buck's type and he should stay away from him just because of that. The shock of hearing that managed to quiet him down entirely, at least for the moment.

The two of them let the conversation drop and Vaas grabbed a bottle of liquor off of the bar, a lukewarm whiskey, throwing down a few crumpled up bills at the man tending the bar. He let out an annoyed groan and poured each of them a drink. Jason downed each drink as soon as Vaas passed them to him, the burn of the cheap liquor just what he needed right then.

It wasn't until Jason was drunk enough that he had to lean on Vaas to walk that they left the tavern. The two of them leaned on each other as they made their way back to the truck for what was bound to be a bumpy ride back to the pirate's encampment.

* * *

Hours after they returned back to the encampment, Jason couldn't stop thinking about his encounter with Buck. Jason leaned against the wall, frowning contemplatively as he thought of the slimy man,"Hey, uh, what did do you mean by that?" He asked, looking at Vaas in an imploring sort of way, drawing the man's attention as he spoke up. "When you said that, I should stay away from him because I'm his type?" The warning had left Jason with a sinking feeling about what that might mean and he didn't like it. Not one bit.

If he was expecting Vaas to tell him that it didn't really mean anything, he was sorely disappointed when Vaas began to speak, "Buck, sometimes he buys product from Hoyt. Slaves, you know. Sometimes they tell me who, sometimes they don't. Fucking, lately they don't. But we can talk about that later, anyways. They're never omegas, he doesn't like them for some reason, so I wouldn't worry too much about him but they are usually like you. In a way."

Jason raised a brow at that, incredulous. "In what way, exactly, are… in what way where they like me?" He asked. He really didn't like the idea that he might be part of a pattern in some psychopathic perverts dirty basement games, but his curiosity about it dwarfed all of his worries entirely. After the direness of the situation had worn down for him, all Jason was left with was his morbid curiosity about the man.

Vaas was almost hesitant to answer at first – which was odd, considering that in the short time that Jason had known him so far he had never bothered to be careful with anything, let alone his words. Jason waited patiently and quietly for his alpha to answer, "Young like you, with dark hair like you. Usually, they're white – though he made a pass at me once or twice when I first joined up with Hoyt. Almost slit his fucking throat for that, the freak." He growled, "And they're strong like you. He likes to break their fucking spirits."

"Oh," Jason said, his mood became dour almost immediately, his face falling at the prospect of a jaunty rapist running around the island – playing mind games with the locals and torturing hostages just for the hell of it – was just depressing to him. Maddening even. "So when he's done with them…" Jason trailed off.

"Then he kills them," Vaas replied, filling in all of his doubts and confirming all of his worries. "Or dumps them off in the jungle to die. Same fucking thing out here."

"Oh shit," Jason exclaimed, more to himself than to anyone else. Jason felt a little sick, but he managed to swallow it down quick enough that Vaas didn't have the chance to notice it. "So he's a rapist and a murderer. A murdering rapist! Cool. Cool, cool, cool. That's just…peachy."

Truthfully the revelation of it all really wasn't all that shocking to him – Buck or Bambi as Vaas liked to call him gave Jason a bad feeling from the get go – but there was a non zero chance that one of his friends was locked up there with him. Maybe Oliver, or more likely Keith or… god, forbid, even Riley. It didn't sit well with him, not even a bit and Jason knew that if they were there, that he would do everything in his power to get them out.

One thing for sure was that Jason needed to find out where Buck lived – he was sure that he could find all of the clues that he needed there. Maybe he would even find one of his friends. Hopefully, he could figure it out without just asking Vaas, with the way that he had reacted to Jason speaking about his encounter with the man he truly doubted that it would go over well at all.


	6. Chapter 6

Grant returned to the temple, smelling like pot and covered in the run-off fuel from the flamethrower that he had been brandishing all day. It had been frighteningly easy for him to get back into the swing of things – running around the island, helping the natives and doing everything in his power to destabilize every bit of power that Vaas and his pirates held over the island just came much too naturally to him.

Occasionally, his mind would wander to the uncomfortable thought that Jason was fixed in with the pirates – he had no idea what the hell they were doing with him or how he could be bonded with someone like that pirate. It wasn't just that it didn't make any sense to him, but that he didn't want to think of Jason like that. Grant didn't want to think that his brother would just be the type of person that he would have avoided like the plague during his tours through Iraq, even when they were the ones on his side. Come to think of it, especially when they were the ones on his side.

"Grant!" Dennis exclaimed as he called him forward into the temple, "Did you find what you were looking for yet?" He asked, seeming agitated – or maybe even a little drunk. As he came closer, the scent of alcohol on breath confirmed Grant's suspicions.

"…in a sense." Grant replied tentatively, "I met this man, hiding out in Badtown. I think he's supposed to be a spy or something? I've been working with him." He doubted that Willis was going to be as much help as he needed, but he was sure the CIA agent would do something for him in return. A quid pro quo, he thought, with a small smile spread across his face.

"Funny, I have never heard of such a man," Dennis replied with a curious sort of tone of voice. "Citra would like to meet with you if you would come along with me." He directed, motioning for Grant to follow along with him.

"He might be able to help me take down Hoyt." Grant commented in a casual sort of tone, "If I can take him down if I can bring this whole thing down, the island would probably be safe from here on out. Right?"

"Oh, no. Grant, you do not want to deal with Hoyt." He warned, "If you think that Vaas is crazy, then you have no idea how bad Hoyt is. He controls everything on this island, the trafficking, the drugs, even the natives. It would be smarter to get your friends and just go."

"Yeah, well. If I don't take him down, then who else will?" He replied in a dismissive tone of voice, "Will you?" He added in a challenging sort of way. He didn't think that the natives were helpless or anything, but he could understand that they weren't exactly in a great position to fight back. Grant had experience with combat, he was capable enough to help take down Hoyt without getting himself killed in the process.

Dennis frowned at that, "I suppose that that is true…" He acquiesced, though he did not seem entirely convinced that Grant would be able to pull it off. The two of them dropped the subject as Citra came in sight once again, both of them became quiet out of respect and deference for her.

She smiled easily at Grant as she addressed the two of them in a polite manner before she decided to call Grant back into the private chambers of her temple. Grant had been a little confused as to why she was taking him somewhere private in the first place, but he figured that he was better off playing along with whatever the Rakyat wanted or needed him to do.

Citra handed him a small glass filled with a gold colored, thick drink and urged him to drink from it. Though he was wary of it, he did as he was told and tipped the glass back – a calm feeling coming over him almost immediately.

He found himself eased down onto what felt like a slab of concrete – the thought crossed his mind that it was almost like something that he might be tied down to and sacrificed upon – as Citra sang his praises once again. She told him what a good warrior that he was, how much he had helped her tribe out and other calming, soothing statements like that. He was so relaxed that her words just washed over him gently, allowing him to just accept the praise for what it was.

When Citra tried to kiss him, it took him by surprise and Grant snapped back to reality. He practically jumped back to avoid allowing the contact to happen. "Uh, woah! That's not-" He exclaimed, a very sudden uncomfortable feeling coming over him. He awkwardly tried to explain himself but he ended up just changing the subject. "So, is there anything else you need me to do, while I'm still here?" He asked, if for no other reason than to occupy the silence that was swallowing up the atmosphere of the room they were in.

Citra's expression darkened for a fraction of a moment before she recovered from the rejection and – at least on the outside – she maintained a calm and measured sort of expression on her face. She was about to say something when Willis' voice came out loud and clear over the radio – telling him about some intel that would show him where Oliver was. "I should go then." He said, his focus narrowed down to doing whatever needed to be done to help his friends.

"Yes," Citra said, doing a complete one-eighty so that she was suddenly all buttoned up and business-like in tone. "Save them. Then return here. We have much more to discuss." She spoke magnanimously, with a pleasant expression on her face as Grant ran off to the village – playing the hero once again.

Citra's pleasant demeanor immediately turned icy as soon as Grant was out of her sight. Grant was her Warrior. He had to be. She had for seen it, she had done the rituals to make sure that she was correct. But if she couldn't keep Grant at her side, if she couldn't keep him kept and loyal, then she wouldn't have any of her goals achieved. She called for Dennis – he had been so loyal to her, ever since he had washed up on the island years ago – she was sure he would be able to figure a way out to fix this for her.

* * *

Spending some time in the cave with his friends every now and again kept Jason grounded and reminded of who he was, why he was here. It was way too easy to get caught up with Vaas and all of the drama that was surrounding him, Grant, Vaas and all the rest of the Rakyat that were fighting that he might end up losing sight of himself if he didn't.

And he couldn't afford to lose sight of himself – for the sake of his friends and family that were trapped here on this island, he had to make sure that, until they were all safe and ready to leave Rook, he kept most of his focus on them whenever he could.

Jason wandered into the cave, taking notice of what everyone was doing. He gravitated towards Daisy first, as she seemed to be the busiest. "Hey. What are you working on?" He asked her as he noticed the tuning up that she had been doing on a rusty, piece of crap looking boat. Daisy smiled at him as her hands were preoccupied with trying to make it seaworthy, "This is what's going to get us out into the ocean." She replied in a chipper tone.

Daisy had spent most of her child out on the ocean, just by virtue of experience she had developed knowledge."Yeah, and straight into the ocean." Jason teased her as he curiously watched her work on the rusty and dangerous looking boat. He couldn't be sure that that thing was safe to just be sitting in this cave, let alone sailing them halfway across the world, back home to Santa Monica.

Daisy snorted derisively at that, "Yeah, says the boat expert." She replied sarcastically. "Hey, while you're here, maybe you can make yourself useful-" Jason laughed at that, "And find me an engine piece." At his look of confusion, she showed him the broken part. "It should look something like this. There's a lot of wreckage here, so there's bound to be one down there that actually works."

"Alright. Fine." He hummed quietly. The omega was happy to help. He had always been athletic and he had always been a strong swimmer – though he was definitely not as strong as Daisy was. He could handle rummaging around looking for spare boat parts for her. Once he came back up with the boat part in hand, he was still dripping wet with lake water. He handed Daisy the part and told her that he went through some trouble to get to it, so it had better be worth it.

Daisy saw him off with a show of her middle finger and he decided to sit with Liza by the makeshift fire that she had made for herself. "Hey," Liza said in a quiet, personal sounding tone of voice. She sat down next to him and handed him a tin box, "I've been foraging around, these herbs might be useful for… medicine or something. I don't know." She wanted to help but she wasn't sure just what she could do.

She would be no good in a fight if anything she'd make it worse, but she felt so awful just sitting there like a lame duck while Grant and Jason ran around the island, causing havoc all around. She felt the need to help. Even in just small, insignificant ways like helping them out with supplies. "Thanks, I'm sure it will help," Jason replied, mirroring her nervous smile. He could tell something was on her mind and he decided to just nip it in the bud and ask her, "So, uh, what's going with you?"

Liza's thoughts came out in the worst way possible when she asked what Jason thought he was doing with Vaas. After a few moments of deliberative silence, Jason finally replied. "I'm playing the long game." He explained, "Well, I… you need to understand that if I work well with Vaas, then I can get us all out of here without risking our lives. At least without risking our lives any more than necessary."

"But you're going to leave with us, right?" She asked, "When this I all over, you're not seriously thinking of staying here?" The answer that Liza was hoping for – the one that made the most sense to her, given everything that had happened – was obvious. She wanted Jason to say that he wasn't going to stay but he wasn't so sure that that was a promise that he would be able to keep. "Jason?"

"I'm not sure yet." He replied after minutes of pointed silence, speaking in an exasperated tone of voice. He had a feeling that this was not the last time that this sort of talk would come up, and as it stood now Jason had no real answer. He was caught at a crossroads – between Rook and California, between Vaas and Grant, between his instincts and between what he had always known.

"I guess it's not a really simple choice is it?" She replied sympathetically, "For better or worse. Vaas is, well, he's your Alpha. What you two have together, it's… intense. Life changing. I can't imagine what kind of stress you're under about this." Liza rambled on a bit and Jason let her speak. "I… never mind, I shouldn't have brought it up. It was wrong of me. Just forget the whole thing."

"Hey, Liza, don't worry-" Jason was in the middle of reassuring her when he noticed Grant walking in and all of his attention was focused on seeing his elder brother again, after so long. "Grant?!" He exclaimed, practically jumping upright as he saw him.

Jason crashed into the older, pulling him into a crushing tight hug. "I haven't seen you in- shit, it feels like it's been years." He commented in a breathless sort of way. Even though he had only been on the island for the last few weeks, it felt like ages since he had been at home in California with his brothers.

"You seem different," Grant commented in a wary sort of tone, as his own thoughts were mirroring Jason's own. Everything had changed and he doubted that any of them would ever be the same after all of this had happened.

Jason gave him a small, uneven smile in return. "Really? You seem the same." He commented in a casual sort of tone. "Well, you look a little tired, I guess. But other than that? You seem completely the same." He shrugged and that was true. On a physical level, this Grant seemed very different from the one that had been sitting with him in that club in Bangkok, telling them all ridiculous stories of his time in Iraq.

But, emotionally? In that visceral, unseen way, he was still the same person. He was still his older brother – who had practically raised him for years, who had always been so loyal to him and Riley and who had always been dedicated to making their lives growing up easygoing.

Grant hadn't needed to say anything about him changing, because he knew well enough that he had changed so much already. The Jason from before they had landed on Rook and the Jason that he was now, were so insanely different from each other that they may as well have come from entirely different worlds, different lives instead of being the same person.

The two of them talked for some time, catching up with each other about the things that they had done. Jason spoke about living with Vaas and his pirates – though he was careful not to bring up the incident that he had had on one of his first days there, he didn't want his brother thinking that he was a murderer– and Grant talked about all of the work that he had been doing for the natives – though Grant tried not to bring up directly that he had been trying to take down Vaas and Hoyt as he didn't want Jason thinking he was going to murder his alpha.

The two of them expertly danced around the full truth of what they had been doing, managing to keep the whole exchange amicable the entire time. They only stopped when Jason noticed that it was turning to dusk outside and he needed to go if he wanted to be back by dark and see Vaas. "Well, this has been fun." He said, much to the disappointment and surprise of the occupants of the cave. They all took to asking him some variance of, "Can't you stay?" Even though he was sure that they knew that he couldn't just stay, otherwise he would be staying instead of rushing off.

"No, I have to go," Jason said, in a tone that broke no arguments. "Vaas will be expecting me back at camp soon and I don't – I can't disappoint him like that. He's given me a lot of trust so far." Grant had an odd look on his face, disbelieving that he would so easily choose one of the men that had gotten him in this mess in the first place, over his own family, his own friends, his old life. "I'm not going away forever. I'll be back I just… he's my alpha. I can't just run away from him like that." He gave Grant a small half smile and picked up the small tin of herbs that Liza gave him, "That's not how this is going to work."

While Grant had not wanted Jason to leave again, he had understood well that Jason was going to do whatever he wanted, the thoughts and feelings of everyone else be damned. He had always been like that – he had always been a little selfish and more than a little impulsive – and there was no reason that he would change just because their situation was more drastic. If anything, Jason might have gotten worse – with someone like Vaas egging on and enabling all of his worse attributes.

* * *

Jason had been sitting in his and Vaas' quarters by himself, guiltily dipping into Vaas' weed stash, when the pirate lord had burst in to the room. Vaas noticed him smoking and laughed, "You dipping in my stash, Mi Amante?" He asked though he knew the answer already. The whole room smelled like pot and Jason's eyes were red and bloodshot – it would have been laughable if Jason tried to deny it now.

"I…" Jason trailed off, trying to think of something to say when he noticed the look on Vaas' face. It was a look that told him not to lie – so he didn't. "Sorry. You weren't here and I was so bored I needed something to do." Vaas laughed and took the joint out of Jason's hand and puffed on it himself.

"You didn't fuck with anything in that little tin box over there, did you?" He asked, pointing towards said box – where he stashed his coke and dope, he didn't want Jason touching that. At least not if he wasn't there with him to keep him steady while he was tripping. Maybe they would soon, he thought.

"No, of course, I wouldn't do anything like that." Jason denied immediately with a brisk shake of his head. "I figured that it was just pot, you know, and you wouldn't mind sharing at least pot with me." He spoke in a quiet and coy tone of voice as he edged ever closer to the alpha.

Vaas kissed him in a way that was unaccountable gentle, "Jason, you are fucking lucky you're mine." He warned Jason as he pulled back, "Otherwise I would have fucked you up for doing something stupid like that." Jason responded with a halfhearted shrug as if he was trying to say; "Well, I haven't thought about the consequences of my actions before and I'm not going to start doing it now." and it showed.

Vaas pounced on the omega, his affection suddenly turning aggressive. He pressed kisses all over Jason's throat and on his face until the omega was giggling stupidly and begging him to stop in between gasping laughter. As soon as Vaas pulled back off of the omega, Jason made his own move and straddled the alpha's hips, grinding his crotch down on Vaas' own clothed erection.

By the time that they got their clothes off of each other, the two of them were panting and moaning from how worked up they had become grinding on each other. Vaas laid back, allowing Jason to take the lead. The omega sighed and forced himself to relax as he speared himself on Vaas' dick. He rode him gently for what felt like hours, stroking his own cock slowly in time with the movement of his hips before Vaas came onto Jason's stomach. The alpha grabbed Jason and pulled him close before he took the omega's leaking cock in hand and brought him off to his own orgasm.

Jason sighed with pleasure as he winded himself down from the high of his orgasm. He slowly settled himself down with the alpha, curling up close to him in a needy sort of way. Vaas wrapped an arm over the omega's chest and pulled him in close. His fingers trailed over a thick cut on Jason's hip, "I got practically got fucking mauled by a tiger on my way back here." Jason muttered in response to the alpha's unasked question, closing his eyes – already half asleep. "Probably gonna scar…"

Vaas laughed, "You better watch out, bonito, you keep running around like that you're gonna end up with a whole fucking lot more scars all over you." He teased, "More than half of them are gonna be from me," He added, "Gonna fucking mark you up all over, til you got me branded under your skin."

The omega really liked the sound of what Vaas had been implying, and if he wasn't already more than a little sore, he would be egging his alpha on for another round. He squirmed his way out of Vaas' grasp and straddled the alpha's hips again. He found himself distracted by the sight of a deep scar running along the side of Vaas' head. And he was feeling much too elated and high to stop himself from saying anything potentially stupid about it, "Speaking of scars," Jason commented in a dreamy, soft tone of voice. "I've been wondering how you got this one," His fingers trailed along his scalp, "It looks like it came out of a brutal battle."

"Oh, that?" Vaas questioned as Jason's fingers traced curiously along the thick scar. "That, fucking whore… Citra gave me that before I left." He explained, his mood souring just from the mention of her name. He hated her. He hated her so much, but he didn't want to set Jason off or scare him by going into a rage at the memory of her.

Citra had ruined him, she had set him down a path of drug use, fighting and killing for kicks. Jason's curiosity peaked at that, "Citra?" He asked, never having heard that name before.

"My sister." He growled, "If you ever meet her, you don't trust a fucking word out of her lying, whore mouth. Understand me?" It was so obvious that Vaas hated her that Jason couldn't do much else but drop the subject completely. "She'll fuck you up, Jason, she fucks everything and everyone that she so much as looks at up." He spoke clearly, desperate to be sure that he had emphasized his point clearly.

With no more arguments or conversations left in his head, Jason rested his head back down on Vaas' chest and the last thing that he felt was the pirate lord's fingers roaving through his hair, soothing at his scalp, before he fell back to sleep once more.

* * *

After hearing Citra's request to see what had Grant so devoted to these people, Dennis had taken it upon himself to find out exactly what had him so invested. As far as he had been concerned, the jungle had called Grant to them and he could not understand why he would be so willing to disregard his own destiny. And for what? For a handful of weak people that couldn't protect themselves, even if they had tried, Dennis just couldn't see why he would put himself through that.

So he followed Grant, shadowing about a half mile away from him as he made his rounds around the island. He hadn't found anything of interest until Grant ran into a tiny cave under the house of Dr. Earnhardt. He still kept his distance, right up until the moment that he saw one of Grant's people wander out of the cave.

Dennis was not at all sure that he had ever seen him before, but it was insanely clear that he was another outsider. He quickly came to the conclusion that Grant was more devoted to his family than he was to the Rakyat's cause. While that was not ideal, he was sure it was something that they could work with. Maybe if they got this one on their side, Grant would be more amenable, more willing to listen to all of Citra's demands and wants.

He followed him all the way back, until he was deep in Pirate territory – though, thankfully still not in Vaas' island. He would not have followed him that deep into his territory – no matter how much he wanted to make Citra happy.

Jason had been wandering around a shallow lake, his pants rolled up to his knees as he tried to catch a few shallow swimming fish for dinner when he noticed that someone was following him. He looked around at the jungle, finding it beautiful as well as too ominous for his tastes. "Hello?" He yelled out tentatively, "Is anyone there?" There was no answer and Jason gave out a shrug, deciding that he was probably just being paranoid. He wondered if maybe he should stop saying 'yes' so much when Vaas offered to share whatever drug he was snorting and smoking at that moment.

He continued on working for a few moments before the sneaking feeling of suspicion hit him once again. He eyed the area around him warily, picking up his bow and drawing it tight as he searched around for the source of his suspicions and shot five arrows in the area that he had targeted.

There was a sound of a quiet groan and a man appeared out of the woodwork. He was an African man of about average height that seemed to be nearly middle aged. He held his hands up in surrender, trying to appear at least nominally non-threatening to the American.

Jason was immediately cagey about the other man, he had never seen him before and even if he had, anyone that would follow him around like that was not worth even the barest scraps of his trust. "Who the fuck are you?" He snapped, reaching for his machete – as he figured that it was just safer to have a weapon out when it came to any strangers on this island – as Dennis was about to speak, he cut the other man off. "Actually, I don't care. Get the fuck away from me or, or I'll gut you." his expression darkened slightly, "Or maybe, I'll call Vaas up and you'll wish that I had gutted you."

Dennis was taken aback by the mention of Vaas, and how casually the American had brought him up. It was almost like he and Vaas were on friendly or more than friendly terms. If this American had somehow aligned himself with the pirates, that did not bode well for Citra's needs.

There was nothing that she despised more than her estranged brother – and the hateful feelings between them were completely mutual. There was no doubt among the Rakyat, that if Vaas ever saw Citra in person again, that he would have his hands around her throat in moments. He would kill her, snuff her life out, the fact of her destiny and her duty to the tribe be damned.

Vaas would see the Rakyat burned down to the ground just to get what he wanted, that's why he was so dangerous. That's why he was an outsider and why he always had been, his betrayal had been foreseen years before it had ever been a thought in the pirate lord's own mind.

He tried to be gentle and to seem like he was kind, so at least the American's guard was down and he would be willing to listen to reason. "My name is Dennis." The man spoke in an easygoing tone, holding a hand out in deference towards the omega.

"That's nice." He smiled thinly, "To be honest with you, I don't really care who you are." Jason replied in a stiff and sarcastic tone. He was entirely untrustworthy of anyone on the island that wasn't his alpha or part of his group. "Now go away," he snapped, "Before I kill you."

"No, you don't need to be afraid." Dennis said as he cautiously approached Jason, "I'm not going to hurt you-" He tried to be reassuring to the omega as he slowly approached. All he needed to do was get close enough to him to hopefully bring him back down to Amanaki, then they could figure out what exactly to do with him afterward.

As Dennis took a step forward towards him, Jason took a step back, and then another step forward and then another step back until Jason was right at the edge of a cliff over a waterfall. Infuriated, Jason started to curse at him, "Oh, you fucking duplicitous little cunt." He snapped at the man, immediately thinking that it was his plan to throw him off of the cliff.

By this point his patience had run thin, Dennis wrestled Jason back off of the cliff's edge. The two of them fought for some time – Dennis with the idea to get him back to Amanaki, even if he had to put the crazy omega in a coma first and Jason with the intent to kill the asshole who gave him a terrible feeling, one that set all of his newly hypersensitive instincts on edge.

Jason punched Dennis in the face, cracking the mans' glasses and running off in the direction of Vaas' island. He got several feet away when Dennis grabbed his ankle, dragging Jason back down onto the forest floor once again. It had occurred to him, with how much the omega was fighting him and how desperate he seemed to get back to the pirates, that maybe it would work out better for him to just get rid of him once and for all – he would probably be less of a problem for them if he was dead rather than alive and coaxed back over to their side.

Jason rolled over, or Dennis rolled him over the action had moved to fast to tell who was actually at fault for this, and found himself halfway dangling off of the cliff's edge once more. "Shit." He muttered, trying to scramble back to safety. It was incredibly difficult, as the stony ground was crafted of smooth rocks and wet, to make things even worse for him. Dennis did not bother to help him, deciding that sacrificing the omega would be worth it, to cement Grant's loyalty to them fully.

"Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…" Jason babbled as his fingers lost purchase on the edge of the cliff's face and down into the cavernous and deep cistern below. He screamed in panic as his body scrambled down, desperately searching for purchase upon… something, anything to stop himself from crashing to his death. At first, Jason had been falling – drowning into the depths of the ocean until he was blue in the face and water was practically filling his lungs.

He swam up as fast as he could, desperate and eager to survive, and clawed himself out of the lake and pulled himself up until he was sitting in a musty cave. Jason crawled forward for a few steps until he collapsed onto the cave floor. He gasped for breath and shuddered as he regained his composure – at least enough that he didn't feel like he was going to die.

Jason curled up on the floor, huddling up in on himself for warmth as he tried to rest himself up after the near-death experience that he had just suffered. It wasn't until hours later, Jason pulled himself out of the cavern –wounded, drenched and covered in twigs and moss. He felt like crap – he was exhausted, he felt betrayed and he was angry. He was so, so angry. If he ever saw that guy who attacked him ever again, he was going to _kill_ him.


End file.
